


Due Supernatural

by queenklu



Category: Supernatural, due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-15
Updated: 2010-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:21:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Constable Samuel Winchester of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has come to Chicago on the trail of the killers of his father and, for reasons about to be explored at this juncture, he has found himself attached to one rough-around-the-edges Chicago flatfoot by the name of Detective Dean Harvelle, who is not as dissimilar as one would suppose. Even factoring in the quite literal demons haunting Sam's past.</p><p>(The boys are not related--this is not a statement.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Due Supernatural

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Big Bang 2010. More art by [sagetan](http://sagetan.livejournal.com) and author notes can be found [here.](http://queenklu.livejournal.com/193027.html)
> 
> Soundtrack is [here.](http://queenklu.livejournal.com/192988.html)

Art by [sagetan](http://sagetan.livejournal.com)

 

“Excuse me,” Sam said, stepping up to take his place at the front of the line. “I’m Constable Samuel Winchester of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I was wondering—“

 

“You’re a Mountie?” a young woman asked as she appeared at his shoulder, tossing her head to remove strands of blond hair from her appraising blue eyes.

 

“Er, yes,” he said, transferring his attention from the man with a rather unfortunate looking haircut behind the desk, and then back again, uncertain as to whom he should be addressing. “I was hoping someone might—“

 

The mullet-haired officer sniffed rather disdainfully from where he’d sagged forward on the desk. “Aint you kinda lost, man?”

 

Sam was very good at not letting his smile go tight—he’d had enough practice. “Thank you kindly, Mr. …Ash, but as long as this is the 27th District of Chicago’s Police Department then I am right where I would like to be.”

 

“You talk kinda funny.”

 

He blinked. “I…beg your pardon?”

 

“Good thing you’re so good looking.” A grin—rather wolfish, and Sam would know—spread across the blond woman’s face as she stepped in, and instead of relaxing as Sam was sure he was meant to, he felt himself tensing under such an obvious display of regard. He barely resisted the urge to tug at the collar of his serge.

 

“Thank you,” he said, finally, “Miss…?”

 

“Harvelle.” She slid another step into his personal space, until there was really very little room between them and the front desk, looking up at him (a great deal, as Sam was considerably taller) through her lashes. “But you can call me Jo.”

 

“Jo.” Sam clasped his hands behind his back and put up all of his walls, shellacking the polite, oblivious Canadian temperament in place. “I’m terribly sorry to bother you—“

 

“Oh, it’s no trouble,” she waved off, linking arms with him to pull him from the line. The Sergeant behind the desk snorted and went back to perusing what appeared to be a picture book, of sorts. “Ignore Ash, he wouldn’t know manners if they hogtied him to a trailer park.”

 

“Hey, now,” Ash warned. “That’s my natural habitat you’re talkin’ ‘bout.”

 

She ignored him, leaning into Sam. “I’d be more than happy to help you with…whatever you need, Corporal.”

 

“Constable,” Sam corrected, clearing his throat. “Miss—Er, Jo. Actually, I’m—I’m hoping you could help me locate an officer of the law.”

 

“Well…” She blinked, slowly, eyes lingering due south of his lanyard as she pushed her chest forward to more prominently display the badge there that read ‘Civilian Aid.’ “I’m practically a police officer—how’s that work for you?”

 

Sam again clasped his hands behind his back, a deliberate and efficient movement he had learned tended to remind people of his professional demeanor. He was almost certain—almost, of course, only counting in matters of horseshoes and hand grenades—that she wasn’t sincerely interested in him, but only attempting to put him off-guard or elicit unfavorable attention she could then turn against him. Many of the female authority figures he’d had previous experiences with up north had been much the same way.

 

“It’s actually a specific officer I’m after, Ms. Harvelle. The one assigned to…this case number?” He pulled the documentation from his belt and presented it to her, all smiles and thank-you-kindlys— _Stop that,_ he ordered himself, and shoved his mindset roughly back in place.

 

“Oh.” Jo’s smirking façade slipped into the mask she wore when doing her job, and Sam allowed himself to feel a small spark of triumph. “Yeah, should’ve figured.” Her mouth twisted, and something in Sam sank. “He’s in the lockup.”

 

“I don’t mind wait—” Sam stopped. “Beg pardon?”

 

“Second cell from the end, can’t miss him,” she sighed, pushing the paper against his chest. “Just look for the one running his mouth.”

 

Even at first glance Sam would have said there were quite a number of men and women detained that would have said fit Ms. Harvelle’s bill rather nicely. He kept his hat in his hands and his footsteps careful and steady, just as he was sure Jo expected him to; as if he was intimidated when faced with so many criminals, but striving to hide it. Instead of unnaturally at ease.

 

Not that Jo had lingered to watch, but hers wouldn’t be the only eyes drawn to a man in a red uniform.

 

There wasn’t anything particularly different about the cell second from the end, aside from the curious glances some of the other inmates sent that way. Or more specifically, the way of the man lounging against the back wall, wearing jeans that looked as if they had been painted on, and a white t-shirt that didn’t seem to have much substance to it at all. Sam’s eyes were drawn to his ornaments—twin leather bracelets on one wrist, a thin metal chain on the other to match a plain silver ring on one insignificant finger. He held his body on display, hips jutting out for everyone to salivate over, but his head turned fractionally towards the older man on his left who seemed all too eager for the attention.

 

“So they hauled you in for your gun, huh?” the shameless man murmured just loud enough for Sam to hear, baring his white, even teeth in a grin. “You even know what to do with it?”

 

“You got a smart mouth on you,” his admirer panted, looking so much like Bela for a moment that Sam rubbed his nose to hide the break in his mask. “ _You_ even know what to do with it?”

 

“Depends. Hey, Dudley Do-Right!” Sam started, caught by the tone of voice and piercing green eyes turned his way. A leer pulled across the man’s features, but not enough to detract from his attractiveness. “You window shopping or looking to buy?”

 

This brought a few rounds of chuckles and jeers from the other inmates, and Sam shook off his inertia and stepped up to the bars, schooling his expression into a polite smile. “Actually, I was told this cell held a Detective Mouth, if any of you—“

 

The man’s features went blank, and then stony, angry as the other prisoners noticed and reared up to their full heights. _Honestly,_ Sam thought as the guard quickly moved forward with the keys, _that was hardly any effort at all._

 

“Nice move, bitch,” the man spat at Sam as he shouldered his way free, and Sam was so startled the word fell from his mouth without consent.

 

“Jerk.”

 

Luckily, the detective seemed too preoccupied pulling his holster over his paper-thin shirt to have noticed.

 

 

 

“Alright!” Dean hollered the second he stepped in the bullpen, “Who sent the Mountie into the holding cell?”

 

“One guess,” Ash hollered without looking up from his skin mag, and Dean rounded on his sister.

 

“The fuck.”

 

“Don’t cuss at me,” Jo smirked, hands on her hips, “You think Lieutenant Singer appreciates you making this a hostile working environment?”

 

“The Lieu’s got enough to do without you screwing up my busts, _Joanna_ ,” he sneered right back. Like that wasn’t a threat that fucking worked on him, every time.

 

Right on cue, the dreaded voice bellowed from his office, “Do I have to separate you two?” loud enough that the entire precinct bustled with people suddenly looking busy.

 

Dean sighed and obeyed, spinning off from Jo. “We’re good, boss.”

 

“Good.” Lieutenant Singer didn’t get up from his desk, which meant Dean had to lean into the office in precarious ways to make sure he could be seen. “Detective Harvelle, I somehow recall you passing a class on paperwork? Even if it was by the skin of your teeth? Or maybe you’re practicing for your future entertaining at kids’ birthday parties and turned the paperwork into a rabbit that just…hopped away.”

 

“Yes, sir, bringing you the bunny, sir.”

 

Dean spun out of his chair with the files in hand and walked smack into a wall of red wool. Christ, they grew ‘em big in Canada. Dean had to jut his chin up a good couple inches to glare this roadblock in the eye.

 

“Why are you still here?” Dean asked, very patiently, he thought. “Haven’t you done enough damage?”

 

“I’m terribly sorry for the misunderstanding,” the Mountie-man said, but he didn’t look terribly sorry. Okay, no, scratch that, he looked plenty sorry, Dean just wasn’t buying it. Nobody that good-looking actually felt anything close to the level of remorse Dean would need to accept that the Mountie felt bad about busting his…bust; Being a decently good-looking guy himself, Dean knew these things. “I was simply trying to—“

 

“Do you know who that was?” Dean cut him off, jabbing a finger back towards lockup. “That man I just spent an hour with breathing down my neck? Biggest damn pimp on the Upper East Side and you blew my cover before he could offer me a job. Son of a bitch.” Dean wrangled free of the wire while he talked, aware that he was flashing some skin but too angry to care at this point.

 

“We have a word for that in Canada.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Dean snapped while he tugged the tape free from his goody trail, “What’s that? ‘Pimp, eh?’”

 

“Entrapment.”

 

Dean’s gaze jerked up, sure for a split second there was something like interest around the corners of the Mountie’s strangely earnest eyes, in spite of the serious disdain dripping from his tone. “…Huh.”

 

“Harvelle!”

 

Dean quickly sidestepped into his boss’s office, dropping the files on the Lieu’s desk as subtly as a guy could drop anything. He could feel the red eyesore hovering right outside the doorway, just as sure as he could feel the gritty scratch of Singer’s pen across the duty roster.

 

Singer didn’t look up when he rumbled, nice and slow to spell it out real clear, “You need me to tell you to play nice, boy?” Then he did look up, and Dean flinched.

 

“No, Sir.”

 

There was a pinch around Singer’s mouth that Dean would’ve sold a lung to have gone in that instant. It was a And-here-I-thought-maybe-I-was-done-worrying-about-you-doing-stupid-shit look, a disappointed look, a look that said if there wasn’t a walking fire hydrant twiddling his hat within hearing range the Lieu would be tearing him yet another new one, to go with his collector’s set.

 

The Lieu’s eyes dropped real briefly to Dean’s wrists, which he made sure to show were nice and unmarked under the thin loops of his bracelets. And he kept his thoughts quiet until a flick of Singer’s pen sent him backing out with a short nod.

 

The Mountie was waiting for Dean at the door—of course he was—and followed him all the way back to his desk like Clifford the Big Red Dog. “Okay, seriously?” Dean asked, eyebrows high but his fire gone, “What do you want from me?”

 

Big Red handed over a piece of paper without a word.

 

Dean barely resisted the urge to bang his head against the desk (again and again and again) then got up and sat on his cluttered desktop to remove the temptation. Which meant his jeans bunched in a way that wasn’t entirely comfortable, but at least he wasn’t breaking his neck staring up at this guy.

 

“Alright, man, look. That you popped in here in person means this is pretty high up on your priority list, right? I get that. Dead Mountie, whatever, probably like if someone killed a cop.” He dropped his voice on that last bit, because you just don’t say shit like that. “But I gotta tell you, this is not at the top of my priorities, and it doesn’t really seem to be at the top of your boss’s either. They keep telling me ‘hunting accident—’”

 

“It _wasn’t_.”

 

Whoa. Alright, fine. Dean had been doing his damned-ness to play nice (in the last few minutes), but that cold fury came out of fucking _nowhere_ and seriously roughed up his calm. Except— The anger was tucked back out of sight so fast that if Dean’s hackles hadn’t still been up, he’d’ve blamed it on sleep deprivation and let it drop. Instead he made them both a little rope-bridge of silence, interrogation technique #134, and waited for this stranger to break it.

 

It gave Dean time to finally look at him, see past the cardboard Mountie cut out to the…well, to the guy Dean wouldn’t kick out of bed if it came in civilian clothes. His hair was longer than Dean expected from the movies (were there even Mountie movies? Maybe he meant cartoons), but combed into place with military precision, brown bangs not quite long enough to be tucked behind his ears. Tall, like Dean mentioned, broad shoulders, trim waist, standing at parade rest. No way was he older than Dean, probably even a small handful of years younger, but his eyes looked old. Not old tired, not old seen-it-all, just… _I know. I know who I am. I know who you are._

 

Neat trick. Half the time Dean didn’t even know who he was.

 

He gave himself a mental shake just as Mountie-boy did it physically, a lock of his carefully organized hair falling down over his brow when he ducked his head. “I’m—I apologize for my outburst, and my failure to introduce myself. I’m Constable Samuel Winchester, RCMP. The ‘dead Mountie,’ as you say, was my father.”

 

An unhealthy, damaged chunk of Dean wanted to leap forward and commiserate with him, go, _Aw man, that sucks, tell me about it_ , but he shut it down. This wasn’t bonding time. This wasn’t a suspect. And in a few more minutes, he wouldn’t even be Dean’s problem.

 

“Yeah, well. This is hunting season,”—Dean started ticking the facts off on his fingers—“your dad wasn’t wearing fire engine red or any other kind of reflective safety gear, he was shot with a common scope rifle caliber, and they found a whole bunch of dead caribou around his body. That really doesn’t point towards murder.”

 

“Perhaps,” Winchester said with a tilt of his head, and why didn’t Dean buy that for a second? “Manslaughter, however, is another matter. If we can prevent another such incident from occurring, then it is our duty to do so.”

 

Dean felt like he was watching one of those instructional videos back at the academy. “Okay, whatever. I’m telling you,” he held up a hand when it looked like Winchester was about to find a way to politely interrupt, “that I will get to it. I will call each and every damn person on that list and grill them like their lives depend on it. And if one of them is guilty? I will haul their ass in.”

 

Winchester’s eyes flicked to the disaster of his inbox, like he’d be able to levitate the list right to the top of the pile if he stared hard enough, then brought his gaze back up to Dean’s so fast it was almost hard to remember it had happened.

 

“Meanwhile,” Dean said around the sudden clench in his jaw, “actual murders are taking place, real life bad guys who mean to do bad and then do it, and who aren’t getting the book thrown at them because people keep interrupting me. Comprende?”

 

Dean spread his arms a little as he stood, a trick to look bigger than he was (and he was not small, just not a freaking sasquatch either) and slid into the Mountie’s space to make him back off. He didn’t, and Dean wound up bruising the back of his thighs on the corner of his desk getting free.

 

“He wasn’t a pimp.”

 

Dean took a deep, calming breath and turned back around. “Pardon?” he said, even going so far as to speak Canadian.

 

“The man—panting at you in the cell?” It even came out with a straight face, pause so subtle Dean almost missed it because—a smile that tight should not give the man dimples. How seriously unfair were his genetics? “He has a tattoo on the back of his neck.”

 

“In America, pimps are allowed to have tattoos.”

 

There was a tiny little shake of his head, and his voice was barely above a hum. “I think you’ll find that it’s a symbol of the mythical beast called an adlet, a vampiric dog-human hybrid that, among other things, mates for life.”

 

Dean stared at him, long and hard. “You just made that shit up.”

 

“No, I didn’t.” There was a smile—a very tiny, almost invisible smile—lurking in the corner of his mouth, but it didn’t look like a _ha ha caught you_ smile. In fact, it looked kind of cold, cut off. “It’s an ancient Inuit legend that has taken somewhat of a cult following in modern times. As long as the blood he indulges in is strictly animal in origin he should be fairly harmless, should you choose to continue your romantic endeavors.”

 

Constable Winchester slung his duffle over one shoulder, turned on his heel, and left with a brief tip of his hat, calf-high boots thudding dully against the cement floor.

 

“…Freak.”

 

 

 

Sam stepped out of the Police Department and breathed deep—or started to, until he remembered the air quality of Chicago in general. Then he cracked his neck.

 

And his jaw. _Damn it._

 

His skin itched from more than the serge. He wanted to shed it, shed these feelings and the uniform and just—

 

No. Sam shook his head. He had things to accomplish before he could. Until then… He gathered up the pretentious words and full sentences, keeping them close, building a wall between himself and the irrational outbursts of emotion brought on by the proximity of that cop.

 

He sighed, inwardly, bracing for a sweetly scathing remark from Bela that, for obvious reasons, never came. For all that he had to put up with when she was around, she might have been able to create a distraction giving Sam the opportunity to search the Detective’s desk. Of course, her distractions tended to involve quite a bit more bodily harm than was strictly necessary…

 

Oh well. Sam straightened his spine that last fraction of an inch and started marching.

 

 ~*~

 

The Canadian Consulate was a sturdy brick building tucked in between slate grey structures twice its height, Americans as overbearing in architecture as they are in spirit. Sam allowed himself a small curl of his lips as he saw the flag, surprised by an unexpected surge of patriotism so far from home. Apparently the serge was both literally and figuratively starting to rub off on him.

 

“OUT OF THE WAY!”

 

Sam hissed in a breath and obeyed, only just catching himself from reaching for…something he hadn’t tried to bring on the plane—as a Canadian officer ran from the building holding a tray of something that appeared to be on fire, wearing a frilly apron over his standard brown RCMP uniform. He bolted past Sam to the edge of a small garden—dry and dying now in the fall—dropped the flaming tray, and proceeded to quite literally hose it down.

 

“Fudge! _Fudge!_ ”

 

At first Sam thought he was merely substituting for the vernacular, but on closer inspection it did indeed seem to be…

 

“Fudge!” the man hollered again, throwing down the hose, then he turned and froze halfway through wiping his oven-mitt adorned hands on his apron. “Dude,” he said, tilting his head to one side to better frown at Sam, “What the hell are you wearing?”

 

Sam wished rather fervently for Bela to be near enough to growl.

 

“I bed your pardon?”

 

“Red. You’re wearing the red. Oh man, you are _so_ getting guard duty—Not it!”

 

“…I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

 

“Wow.” The nose above his scruffy chin wrinkled. “You’re like, really Canadian, eh? I mean, pfft, so am I. Hi,” he said, extending his hand, then jerking it back to remove the oven mitt before extending it again. “I’m Constable Andrew Gallagher. Andy. What up.”

 

“Constable…Samuel Winchester...”

 

“Huh,” Andy said, tilting his head, “Must be new. So, uh…” He started heading towards the Consulate entrance, walking backwards to trail Sam along. “What’d you do?”

 

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Pardon?”

 

Andrew’s smile went crooked, then let out a scoff. “No, seriously. This is, like, the Land of the Lost—Toys. Or the Land of…I don’t know, Recalled Toys. The toys with, like, pieces babies choke—You know what? This is Mountie dumping ground, my friend. If they’d wanted you in Canada, they’d-a kept you there.”

 

“Interesting.” Sam had to put a little extra effort into keeping his face blank, but not for the reasons anyone might guess. “Were you perhaps— I don’t mean to pry, but what brought you to Chicago?”

 

“Pry.” Andy’s face contorted momentarily as he scoffed. “Dude, maybe they kicked you out for being _too_ Canadian.”

 

He pushed the door open, almost into another Mountie, this one with short-cropped dark brown hair under his slightly singed Stetson that was much more kempt than Constable Gallagher’s had any hope to be. And he was clean-shaven, spine ramrod straight under his mildly scorched red uniform. “Welcome to Canada!”

 

“Shut up, Corbett,” Andrew ordered, and shouldered him to one side.

 

Constable Corbett seemed unperturbed, if the fact that he clicked his heels together was any indication. “May I offer you some pemmican? It expands!”

 

Sam’s stomach turned, mask slipping almost completely off as the bag of dried flesh was shoved under his nose. “Ah, no thank you.” He squeezed past Corbett—barely—and followed Andy’s stalwart stomp down the hallway lined with portraits of the Queen.

 

“Was he, ah, too Canadian?” Sam asked, blandly. Andy gave him a look, then huffed and paused outside a door emitting faint tendrils of smoke.

 

“Dunno. I heard he dissed curling. Look, Inspector Tiel’s in his office—I’ve got another batch of brownies to bake, so if you don’t mind...”

 

“Oh, it wasn’t fudge?” Inane was almost Sam’s second nature, now. Good.

 

“What wasn’t?”

 

“The pan you left outside.”

 

“Oh, yeah,” Andy agreed suddenly, nodding with undue exaggeration, “Definitely. _Special_ fudge.”

 

The Sam he wasn’t supposed to be snorted. The Sam he currently was nodded politely and went to speak with Inspector Tiel.

 

 

Okay, only so many places a Mountie could be: the Hoser Hut down on 7th—which, color Dean dumb, but this particular Canuck didn’t seem like the Hoser Hut kind of guy, and not just because a puck hadn’t taken out any of his teeth—or the Canadian Consulate. And even if he wasn’t there, odds were they’d know where he was.

 

So Dean could have _called_.

 

Instead he pulled his baby over to the curb and got out, making a beeline for the doorway overshadowed by a blinding red and white maple leaf flag. Aw, cute, they even had a Mountie statue out front for the tourists to take pictures w—

 

Dean stopped. Looked around. Looked back at the perfectly immobile human being standing guard.

 

“You’re kidding right?”

 

No answer.

 

“You are _fucking_ kidding me.”

 

Not even a blink.

 

“Shit.” Dean raked a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. He’d thrown on his leather jacket before high-tailing it out of the precinct, but he hadn’t managed to grab another shirt—and like hell was he zipping up—so the autumn air had a bit of a bite to it, almost enough to make him envy a cocoon of retina-searing wool. …Nah.

 

“Constable Winchester?” He stood a little to one side, trying to coax those strangely intriguing hazel eyes his way. “Samuel Winchester? Can I call you Sam?”

 

The Mountie didn’t even breathe differently.

 

Dean thought about heading inside, asking when the spell wore off their little toy soldier so he could come back later, but that didn’t—it didn’t feel right pretending Winchester didn’t exist, even though the guy didn’t seem inclined to return the favor. Which…alright, might not be such a bad thing. For now.

 

Dean rolled his shoulders, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet before he just spit it out. “Alright, I’m sorry if I came off as all—cold shoulder and shit about your dad. That really, truly sucks.”

 

Dean thought he saw a flicker at the corner of Sam’s—the Constable’s—gaze, but he could have just been blinking. If he was allowed to blink. “I can do the cop-speak if you’d like that better. I’m genuinely sorry for your loss. Death of a loved one is always a tragedy.” Nothing. “Nah, it’s hard for me to sell, so it’s gotta be hard for you to buy. Just trust me, I really do feel bad for brushing you off. When my dad died I was a fucking wreck, and he just had a heart attack. If there was someone to blame besides bacon fat and high cholesterol I’d go to the ends of the earth hauling the son of a bitch in.” Dean’s lips quirked, and he almost got another blink. “So I guess we’ve got that in common.”

 

Part of what made Dean a good cop was what Jo called his “freaky people reading voodoo,” and the fact that Winchester was giving him so little to go on… Well, that may have snagged Dean’s interest a little. Now, other people might say he was imagining things, but it looked to Dean like Sam (and it was Dean’s head, he could call him whatever he wanted) got a little soft around the edges. Like he said, not so anyone would notice. Except people looking for it.

 

Dean hid the start of a smile, looking off across the dying lawn. “Oh and you were right about the pimp—or not-a-pimp—by the way. Turns out he’s some low life Internal Affairs bought trying to sniff out… Whatever, you saved my hide. And I set up a tail to make sure if he is into that blood stuff that he gets his poison from a butcher shop and not the local mortuary. So, nice tip.”

 

Sam was playing dumb again—ain’t nobody here but us chickens—but if Dean thought he could see a little smugness buried in there, who was he going to tell?

 

“So…” He cleared his throat, rocked on his heels. “So I made a few calls. Well, alright, I called everyone on that list of people flying in and out of Canada around the time of the accident.” Dean paused, expecting some sort of outburst, but the most he got from Sam was a little pinch in the corner of his mouth. “Seeing as it was the first week of hunting season, I was sort of expecting… But I guess it’s our luck that not many people can afford flying to the middle of nowhere, right?”

 

Dean even reached out to nudge him a little, before letting his hand fall short and eating his grin. Something about the royal guards. Didn’t they have permission to beat you up if you touched them? Christ.

 

“Look, listen.” He moved directly into Sam’s line of sight so he didn’t have a choice about the first bit. “Like I said, if it was my dad, I’d be kicking heads out of the way to get the guy that popped him. And I’m figuring you for that kind of guy, too. But the thing is, I can’t let you wander around terrorizing completely innocent people looking for the bad fruit in the bunch, and seeing as I’m—kinda between partners at the moment, I thought I’d let you tag along. You know. With me. On the job. …Helloo.”

 

Not even a blink.

 

“Seriously, dude, I’m gonna find a spoon somewhere and dangle it from your mouth—”

 

Sam’s gaze snapped to his and for a second, and Dean swore he could hear bells.

 

Probably because he was, in fact, hearing bells. Clock bell, chime type things. Five of them. Still, it kind of made his hair stand on end.

 

“That’s the end of my shift,” Sam said, kind of quietly, and then his eyebrow quirked. “A spoon?”

 

“It lives!” Dean cried, maybe a little over the top. He dropped his hands, shoulders rolling in their holster. “So you coming?”

 

“Yes.” Sam took off his Stetson and tucked it under one arm, and it might’ve just been the Autumn sunlight hitting his features but Dean thought he saw something…human…in the flash of Sam’s grin. “Definitely.”

 

“You don’t need to check with anyone?” Shit, was Dean stalling? Now? _Why?_ Other than whatever was making his chest feel tight out of the blue. “You know, before we—head out?”

 

Sam looked over his shoulder with a definite wince. “No, you’re right. One moment.”

 

He barely touched the doorknob when it jerked open and a Mountie—or a Ranger Rick, he wasn’t wearing the red uniform like Sam—fell out. “Oh, heeeey,” Mr. Rick drawled. “Hey, Sam. You don’t. Have to stand guard any more,” he added, pausing to half-ass a hiccup. “Okay?”

 

“Thank you, Constable Gallagher, I had noticed.”

 

Dean nearly pulled something trying not to snort. All he managed to do was turn Sam’s hilarious expression his way. Definitely something Jo would call a bitch-face.

 

“Could you please inform Inspector Tiel—Oh, never mind. Corbett?”

 

A second Mountie, wearing the red and probably not high as a kite, appeared at Gallagher’s shoulder. “Yes, sir!”

 

“I’m going out.”

 

Dean grinned. This was pretty damn awesome, seeing Constable Samuel Winchester’s Canadian tapped down to the bottom of the barrel.

 

“Yes, sir!” Corbett saluted. “I will inform the Inspector! Where shall I tell him you’ve gone?”

 

Sam closed his eyes. Dean’s grin was starting to hurt in places. “Tell him I’ve gone with Detective Harvelle.”

 

“Ah,” Corbett winked. “I see. A little tête-à-tête, as the French say. And the Canadians. Well, the French speaking Canadians. And the Quebecois. Which, I suppose—“

 

Sam shut the door in their faces. Dean’s day was officially made. 

 

“Now that was damn near rude,” he mock-gasped as Sam joined him in walking towards the car. “Think you’ve got a bit of Chicago in you, Sammy.”

 

Their elbows brushed, so Dean got to feel the surprise flicker through the Mountie’s frame. All he got on the outside, though, was a wrinkled nose. “Sammy?”

 

“Mmhmm,” Dean smirked, probably way too smug as he climbed into his baby. Yeah, her hinges squeaked, but not nearly loud enough to cover up Sam grumbling, “Sounds like a chubby twelve-year-old,” as he slid into the passenger’s seat.

 

 _He looks good in it,_ hit Dean like a hacky-sack between the eyes, but he shoved the thought away.

 

“That’s the first incomplete sentence I’ve heard from you,” Dean said, playing up his incredulity but not by much. “Right on, Sammy. Right on.”

 

Highway to Hell and the Impala’s roar to life plowed over any more protests. One classic rock CD: $15. The look on Constable Winchester’s face: fucking priceless.

 

“Would you mind—? This isn’t really—“

 

“Allow me to explain an American cultural thing to you: Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.”

 

“What, pray tell, is a cakehole, and where does a firearm enter into it?”

 

“…You are so full of shit.”

 

 

Sam was truly starting to regret accompanying Detective Harvelle, and it had nothing to do with his fondness for ‘mullet rock’ or questionable interrogation techniques, which seemed to mainly consist of blatantly flirting with every woman in sight until the interested party became annoyed, and then using that fluster against them.

 

Not that Sam was flustered at all. Not in the slightest. No, he decided, eyes hardening at nothing in particular, he was not.

 

Dean was—“mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” to group him with Lord Byron.

 

And they weren’t getting anywhere.

 

“So we’ve just got the one last interview to do today,” Dean announced as he stepped from his car—a ’67 Chevy Impala painted six coats of gloss black that Dean had gone on (and on) about for great length. “After, you wanna grab some chow?”

 

“With you?” Sam flinched at his own tone, all the more heartfelt when Dean’s cocky strut faltered but didn’t halt.

 

He flipped his keys over in his hand without looking at Sam. “Or not.”

 

Sam ducked his head and rubbed at the backs of his eyes just in time for the deeply (or apparently not so) buried other-Sam to surge up and say, “I’m sorry,” loud enough that no muffling would disguise it.

 

Dean stopped and turned to look at him, one hand on the pushbar of the building door. It was just starting to drizzle a little, so Dean had to look over the upturned collar of his leather jacket.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sam said again, in for a penny. “The number of hours it takes to fly from Innuvik—” He cut himself off. “That is, I would very much like to have dinner with you.”

 

His inner Sam flopped down with a ruthless smirk, even when he reminded it that this meant they wouldn’t be shedding the uniform until much later in the evening.

 

Inner-Sam offered up a few suggestions for getting them out of it sooner. Highly inappropriate suggestions, shocking enough that Sam—

 

“Yeah, okay,” Dean said, casual as anything as he pushed open the door, “Sounds like a plan.”

 

 

 _Gotta love the smell of fluoride in the morning_ , Dean thought grimly, trying not to wrinkle his nose as the dentisty smells wafted over them. The waiting room was pretty quiet, just a mom flipping through a _Healthy Living_ while her kids built vaguely obscene shapes out of building blocks. There was a blond chick with her blond hair cut all pixie short wearing pink pooh-bear scrubs at the front desk, perky nametag perched on a perky rack that read ‘Meg.’ (The nametag, that is, not her—shut up.)

 

“Meg Masters?” he asked, draping a little over the counter, _maybe_ showing off a bit. For anyone, or at least, not anyone in particular. “Hi.” He grinned, coaxing a smirk out of her. “I’m Detective Harvelle. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

 

“Right, about my boss and his hunting trip.” Her equally perky eyebrows jumped. “I told you he wasn’t in today.”

 

“Yeah, but,” Dean dropped his voice just a little, almost hitting the gravelly purr he’d been rocking that morning in the lockup. He didn’t let himself think too hard about why every sense he had was straining for a reaction from Sam, though. Dean snagged one of the flower-topped pens from the desk and tipped it Meg’s way. “You were on that trip, too.”

 

“Yeah, sure,” she said, shrugging conspiratorially as her tone fell to a mocking hush, “But I wasn’t there to hunt anything.”

 

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t see anything strange,” Sam cut in, totally killing the mood.

 

Dean eased back enough that Meg could get a look at him too, and instantly wished he hadn’t. Her eyes went wide at the bright colors, but when they zoned in on his face all Dean could do was watch the blue in her irises darken down to burnt indigo. Pretty much par for the course.

 

“Well, well,” she said, and she really nailed the purr, “He does talk. Where’s his string? I’ll give it a pull.”

 

 _In-a-propriate_ , Dean’s gut announced, like maybe he couldn’t tell. A flush the color of his uniform was creeping up Sam’s neck—but not an appreciative one. He didn’t look to Dean for help and he didn’t look annoyed; all he looked was disinterested, uncomfortable, and unimpressed. It made something in Dean squirm, but he wasn’t about to put a name to what.

 

“Be nice, he’s Canadian,” Dean heard himself cut in anyway, which. Oh man, so not the plan, but it got Meg’s eyes back on him for a sec. He cocked his head. “You got somewhere we can talk?”

 

“Sure.” She sounded way too smug about getting them alone, feeding just about every threesome fantasy Dean had never let himself have with one smirk.

 

It was just a short walk to Dr. Gordon Walker’s office, which was full of browns and grays that made Dean want to kill himself, but hey, to each their own. A couple pictures hung up—Dr. Walker, he presumed, an average-looking African American male with a closely shaved head and a short beard type thing around his mouth (Dean was crap for beard names), standing most often with an older black woman who was probably his mom, and a much younger woman who was probably his sister. No wife, no life. No hobbies, besides a photo of him straddling the neck of a felled Rudolf.

 

“I took that,” Meg said, tapping the frame. “Not my best work, but try explaining angles and light refraction to a bunch of dentists. I minored in photography,” she added to answer Dean’s questioning look. “The boys let me tag along on their trips so I can…frolic with the nature.”

 

Something about the way she spoke—not just now, but always—rubbed Dean the wrong way. Soft and syrup slow. He hated it. He hated it more when she dripped it at Sam. _Taunting,_ that was the word. _I’ve got a secret, I’ve got a secret._ So did she really or was she just fucking with the guy in red?

 

Dean shouldered between them again, and if they thought he was competing for her attention fuck them both. “So, Miss Masters.” He could do that taunting thing too, running his knuckles along his notepad. “Did you? See anything strange?”

 

“What, you mean like—Big Foot?” She sidled around the desk, blue eyes stuck on the Mountie. “Werewolves maybe?”

 

“No,” Dean drawled, “Like unsafe or inexperienced gun handling.” What the _hell_ was up with Sam? He was damn near rigid at Dean’s side, pasty white under the neon lights.

 

Meg’s eyes flicked to Dean’s and stuck, finally. “No. Why?”

 

“A man was killed in the area your group went looking for eight tiny reindeer—“

 

“Caribou,” Sam corrected like a knee jerk. So Dean only wanted to hit him a little bit.

 

“Whatever,” he said instead. And raised his eyebrows at Meg.

 

“Killed?” she repeated, all fluffy white and pure, like one of those aliens that looks like a kitten until it opens it’s maw and eats the extra’s face. “How?”

 

Every bit of Sam’s tension was screaming _don’t don’t don’t_ but it was so loud Dean’s mouth was moving by the time he understood the word. “Hun—“

 

“Thank you for your time.” Sam’s grip on his arm was going to leave actual fucking bruises, _Jesus._ Dean jerked free pretty quick but not fast enough to keep his fingers from tingling with blood loss. _Ow._

 

Meg’s smirk bared all of her teeth. “See you around, Constable Winchester. Detective Harvelle.”

 

Dean’s gears got so wrenched at the way she’d tacked him on, at the tone of her voice, that he let himself be herded all the way to the Impala before he sidestepped Sam’s crowding. “Damn it, Sa—“

 

Dean stopped. Shut the door to his car without getting in, something ugly crawling up his spine. “How did she know your name?”

 

Dean had been in firefights before—he’d lost a partner to one for fuck’s sake—and Sam had that same look on his face. That blank, have-to-run, nowhere-to-go look, mask torn almost all the way off.

 

“Sam?” Dean shoved out, backing towards the door. “How did—fuck it.”

 

“Dea—Detective! _Wait—“_

 

“Now that just smarts,” Dean bit out under his breath as he tore up the stairs three at a time with Sam all-but on top of his heels. “You didn’t introduce yourself, _Sammy,_ so how—“

 

Dean shut up when they slammed their way into the waiting room, but the mom still squeaked and dropped her magazine like it was on fire when she saw them. Either that or she was a little shocked at the bone-jarring shatter of plate glass as something heavy flew through a window, it was kind of a toss up.

 

“Shit!” His shoulder hit the door before his hand did, so it half opened and half snapped the lock to Gordon Walker’s office as they barreled inside. The window behind the desk gaped with a huge jagged hole, faint smattering of blood on the bottom edge, and Dean’s stomach was trying to crawl up the inside of his throat before he even made himself look.

 

He focused on the cool, heavy weight of his gun in his hands and Sam’s almost-too-close presence at his back. Meg he couldn’t focus on, a tangle of unnatural angles and staining pooh bear scrubs on the concrete below them, broken glass scattered around her crumpled body.

 

Sam breathed out something like, “Damn,” which was shocking enough without the sudden absence of his heat at Dean’s side. _Fuck._ Dean tore off after him, shutting down every emotional sensor he had so he’d be able to look at her body up close.

 

“Sam, don’t touch anything,” he hollered as they sprinted around the building’s corner in the parking lot. “You don’t have—“

 

He shut up.

 

The body was gone.

 

He looked up at the broken window, and the rain beating away the blood on the concrete.

 

Meg Masters was gone.  


  


  


Dean kept blithering nonsense about body snatchers long after the backup had arrived to secure the crime scene, in and around gathering up and talking to witnesses, shutting down the office for the rest of the day. The other dentist, a Dr. Cara Roberts, looked so badly shaken Sam had to all-but carry her as he escorted her down to the waiting police cars for a medic to check over. She seemed almost…too shaken up, actually, as if it were a pretense to cling, but when Sam asked if her perfume was Coco Christo she just asked, “You mean, Coco Chanel?” and her eyes didn’t turn pitch black.

 

Unlike how Meg Master’s most certainly would have. _Big foot. Werewolves._ Taunting him like that in front of D—in front of a civilian… It wasn’t as if he could whip out the holy water tucked in his belt, now, could he? And she’d known it.

 

Sam forced his fists to unclench before he stepped back into Dr. Walker’s office. If he hadn’t been with— His eyes fell on Dean, riffling through desk drawers, and the rest of that thought refused to complete itself.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“Detecting.” Dean wrinkled his nose then lifted his almost unnaturally green eyes to meet Sam’s. “Don’t tell the Lieu.”

 

Sam took another step closer, widening his stance a little. If that happened to provide Dean with ample cover from anyone poking their heads through the door, so be it. Still. “I believe you need a warrant.” Because that was what a Mountie would say.

 

“Nah, these were wide open. You saw.”

 

Sam looked pointedly elsewhere. “I know what I’m certainly not seeing.”

 

“Atta boy.” He didn’t see Dean’s grin, either, but that was probably for the best. He refrained from turning his head back until Dean dropped down in Dr. Walker’s office chair with a thick white envelope, declaring, “Well, well, well. ‘ _Hunting Trip 2010—Gordon’s Copy.’_ Maybe we’ll get to check out Meg’s photographical skills after all.”

 

Sam’s fingers cramped with a twitch he barely held in check. He couldn’t have moved fast enough to take the photos from Dean, or come up with a plausible excuse for him not to look; he still twitched, knowing both of these things. There were just some things Dean shouldn’t—

 

“Oh my g—” Dean choked and recoiled, dropping the pictures on the desk before he sank forward and rubbed hard at his eyes. “Fuck. So when she said _frolic_ with the nature she really meant— Son of a _bitch._ ”

 

Sam’s fingertips fanned the photographs well enough to get the gist, which was carnage. Toying with caribou entrails, draped with them like jewelry, Meg baring bloody teeth at the camera with gleeful ocher eyes. 

 

“Interesting contact lenses,” Sam murmured faintly, just in case Dean thought to question them. Then he looked away.

 

“You look at that and see contact lenses?” Dean’s voice was rough and flat, but without the judgmental edge Sam was expecting. He straightened anyway, serge hopefully hiding the tension in his shoulders.

 

“Sometimes it’s easier to look at the details,” he said finally, and paused to determine which way the picture in his hand was supposed to be held.

 

“Who would print these?” Dean snapped after a moment, flipping through the photos Sam had discarded by holding them as far from his body as his arms would stretch. “I mean, what sort of company—“

 

“This card stock doesn’t have a logo,” Sam pointed out, voice unnecessarily quiet, “If she was truly passionate about photography she could very well have her own dark room, or high-price digital photo printer. Wait.” He brought the picture to his mouth and gave the back a brief lick. “Photo printer, I think. I would be able to taste the chemicals.”

 

Dean was staring at him, unblinkingly. “What. Did you just do.”

 

Sam did not allow himself to blush. After all, a photograph was hardly one of the worst things he’d ever tasted. “It’s a perfectly legitimate investigative technique.”

 

“Yeah. Dogs do it to investigate their—“ Dean’s words faltered before he finished with, “hindquarters,” and scowled at Sam as if it were his fault. “You legitimately licked the evidence.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“…Canadians,” Dean said after a moment, rubbing at his forehead as if he were in pain. “So what do you think? Satanists?”

 

He had been braced for this—show a cop animal entrails and his first thought will be them dang pagan devil worshippers. He still made himself ask, “What makes you think so?”

 

Dean made an aborted snorting noise. “Um, she’s making pointy shapes with the guts, Sammy; I don’t think that was just for fun.” He swallowed, but Sam barely noticed. “Maybe.”

 

Sam snatched the photo from Dean without any thought to how it looked, feeling brittle and gut-shot, but Dean just snatched it back with an annoyed grunt and spread it out on the desk with the others. “You, details. Me, big picture,” Dean muttered, then leaned back in his chair.

 

“It’s the s…” _Sigil of Azazel_ , the rest of Sam’s mind breathed while his voice went silent. Every Sam he’d ever been writhed.

 

“It’s the what?” Dean sounded far away, which was _not true,_ and Sam shook his head violently to bring himself back in to the room, the office, where Dean was standing far too close, holding onto his arm. “Sam? _Sam?”_

 

Sam’s near-visceral reaction was to shove him away, and it took every fraction of give in his strained nerves not to. To stay still. To meet Dean’s gaze and speak.

 

“It’s the sickest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, as strongly as he could. “I apologize for my lack of control.”

 

“Yeah, okay, Mr. Spock,” Dean said, sounding remarkably unconvinced. “Want to try again?”

 

“Nothing.” Sam took a breath and closed his eyes, catching the shocking sting of moisture behind his lids. “It’s nothing.”

 

 _It’s Azazel. You knew it would be. Why are you so surprised?_

 

“Hunting accident’s looking pretty good right about now, huh?” Dean said gently, attempting a joke to relieve the tension.

 

Sam glared at him before he could stop himself.

 

“Man…” Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Sam, I’ve got to ask. Your dad ever tied up in any of this black magic type stuff?”

 

“No.”

 

“You sure?”

 

Sam withdrew a little from the look in Dean’s eyes but held it, made himself nod. When Dean looked away it was a slow, deliberate move that raised the hairs along Sam’s arms, but what could he do? What could either of them do?

 

“We still don’t know if this has anything to do with your dad.”

 

Sam clenched his jaw shut around an ugly bark of laughter.

 

“She could just be a psycho _freak_ ,” Dean insisted, straightening from where he’d hip-checked the desk. “Seriously, we haven’t talked to everyone on the list, and we haven’t talked to Gordon Walker—who, by the way, we really should since he’s got some highly disturbing scrapbook material right here—and after all that it could be we just stumbled on something we weren’t even looking for.”

 

Sam’s head bobbed dutifully, a faint smile tacked onto his mouth as he let Dean talk himself out of any correlation. “Thank you,” he said when Dean was done, “I’m afraid I really should be going. I’ve taken up too much of your time already.”

 

“Whoa, wait a second,” Dean blurted, jumping forward to catch his arm again and Sam nearly bit through the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t bare his teeth and snarl, _Back off._ Once he actually registered the look on Dean’s face, however, the effort wasn’t necessary. “So you’re reneging on the chow?”

 

Sam was startled into answering somewhat honestly. “I’m not…hungry.”

 

Dean shot a look over at the photos and grimaced. “Yeah, me neither. Still. You got somewhere else to be?”

 

Sam blinked, then glanced pointedly at the crime scene. “Don’t you?”

 

“Nah, forensics are on their way, and they like us out of their hair. Spangler and Zeddmore? Yeah, guess you wouldn’t know them. Weird as fuck, man, but they get the job done.”

 

Sam couldn’t very well share faith in the ability of civilians—or anyone but himself—to get this particular job done. He turned his grim face towards the floor, hoping to spare Dean’s inquiring eyes.

 

“Truth is,” Dean started, briefly rubbing at the back of his neck before letting his arms swing wide, “I don’t think you should be alone tonight. Strange country, don’t know anyone, and weird bodysnatching-black-magic-wacko-shit around the case of your dad’s death… Do you even have a place to stay?”

 

Sam didn’t let himself falter. “Inspector Tiel has offered the use of a cot in one of the Consulate offices.”

 

The Detective’s expression slid into one of incredulous disgust. “A cot?”

 

He kept himself still, eyes blandly polite, hands behind his back. No, he wasn’t looking forward to folding himself into a pretzel to fit on a standard-issue, too-short frame, but he’d slept in worse places, in worse situations. “It’s a perfectly acceptable and inexpensive—“

 

“So is my sofa-bed, and you’ll actually fit on it. Come on, Sasquatch,” Dean ordered, motioning for him to move, “After you.”

 

“I—“

 

“No,” Dean said, “No, Sam, no. No, no, no, no, no…”

 

Sam inexplicably flushed as Dean continued his monosyllabic tirade all the way down the hall, dragging Sam helplessly in his wake, if only because Dean’s severe lack of supporting arguments was enough to strike him dumb.

 

The heat around his collar finally provided enough self-frustration that he was able to blurt, “I have an errand I need to run,” but not before they’d made it to the car and Dean had all-but placed him in the passenger’s seat like an infant or a convict he expected to flee. Sam’s already uneasy stomach curdled in shame.

 

“I love errands,” Dean announced, baldly lying—but with gusto—as he clipped his seatbelt and turned over the engine. “Where to?”

  
~*~  


 

 _You’re late,_ Bela informed Sam regally, the instant the desk jockey set to the task of pulling up their (expertly forged) files. Then, tail waving in a too-approximate wag, she settled her long, sleek body at his side and blinked golden amber eyes at him, tongue peeking out between her white, lethal teeth.

 

“Most animals with your credentials wouldn’t make it across the border,” Sam reminded her under his breath, “I think you could hardly compare an extra hour here to hell.”

 

 _Oh, really, Sam, is that what we’ve come to already?_ She attempted a human sniff and sneezed instead, daintily and full of disdain. _Ruthless quips in retaliation for a simple request for an explanation?_

 

“Things came up.” He kept his voice quiet and his smile benign, and the pimple-faced employee only spared them half of a glance that suggested he’d heard worse from people talking to their pets as he handed over the receipt for Sam to sign.

 

“She’s a real pretty dog,” he said, showing Sam a gap between his teeth.

 

Bela instantly washed her paws of them both, in such a way that she remained acutely interested in the newfound appreciative appraisal. She’d taken special care with her glamour, Sam would give her that.

 

Sam tried not to sigh. “She is aware.”

 

The desk-jockey nodded and took back his pen. “Aren’t they all?”

 

“…Thank you kindly,” Sam said with a certifiably Mountie-like nod, and somehow managed to keep his expression fixed long enough to exit the building, even with Bela smirking at him the whole way.

 

 _Did you miss me, Samuel?_ she simpered, each word dropped deliberately into his skull.

 

“Like a venereal disease,” he retorted before he could help himself, and snapped his jaw shut so fast his back molars caught on the inside of his cheek, sending up a bright flare of gaze-narrowing pain.

 

 _And you know so much about sexually transmitted diseases, do you?_ Bela cut across his stride, forcing him to stop in his tracks or trip over her. _Oh my,_ she said, tail wagging indolently at the sight of Dean, relaxing against his Impala in the few scattered rays of sunlight left. _I see what you mean. Things came up, indeed._

 

“Demon possession,” Sam corrected, still murmuring despite the long stretch of parking lot separating his words from Dean’s ears. “The sigil of Azazel. Animal sacrifices. And an offer of hospitality, should we choose to accept it.”

 

 _Are we stupid?_ Bela inquired, tone near-musical with insincerity. She didn’t always choose to speak in words; sometimes—never at convenient times—she’d simply shove her impressions into his head. Now, for instance, Sam found himself studying Dean with senses he didn’t possess, intensely aware of Dean’s hidden strength in the fit of him against the rain-damp hide of the Impala. Not prey, but equal. Sam shook himself free, but not before her last impression of _he is like us._

 

 _A hunter and his familiar,_ Bela pressed, unruffled at the brush off, as she trotted over to greet Dean. _And you found one in Chicago? Well done, Sam._

 

“He’s not a hunter,” Sam blurted before she could do something foolish like slip into his mind. Not that she would—hunters never usually took kindly to talking creatures—but…he wasn’t thinking clearly. He raised his eyes to Dean’s, expecting another look like the one he’d received from the receptionist. _It would be for the best,_ Sam pointed out to himself, _if he wrote you off as crazy._

 

Dean just raised his eyebrows. “Not a what now?”

 

“I apologize,” Sam said, ducking his head, “Bela tends to think every man with a firearm uses it to hunt. It’s a product of our rather rural upbringing.”

 

“Well,” Dean said as he settled down on his haunches to meet her unwaveringly regal gaze. “I hunt people, pretty girl, does that count?” He looked uncharacteristically embarrassed by the endearment that slipped out of his mouth, which was just…endearing.

 

 _How perfectly quaint._ Bela looked over her shoulder at Sam. _We may keep him._

 

“We’re not—“ Sam bit off his words and flushed.

 

“It’s okay, man,” Dean brushed off as he straightened. “I talk to the Impala all the time.”

 

“Really?”

 

“No,” Dean scoffed, “She’s a car. But, you know, dog’s a living thing; that’s totally different.”

 

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “I distinctly remember you calling it ‘baby’ when you violated several posted speed limits to make it through a yellow light.”

 

Bela broke through their bickering by darting forward to plant her paws on Dean’s shoulders and lick one broad swath up his cheek, startling a sputtered curse from his mouth.

 

“Bela!” Sam gasped, hauling her off by the thin silver chain around her neck. He’d been ignoring the intensity of her observation, blocking access to his mind, and this was his punishment as much as Dean’s.

 

 _He is tasty, Samuel,_ she declared, unperturbedly licking her chops.

 

He grabbed her muzzle and made her take the full brunt of his glare. “Dean is not food.”

 

 _I may be that kind of hungry—_ an image of the dust-dry kibble she must have been subjected to flashed in his mind— _but you aren’t._ She fixed him with a golden-eyed stare. _It’s not a crime, Samuel. And it’s certainly not a sin. You do trust me to know about sins, don’t you Sam?_

 

“Unfortunately,” Sam had to agree.

 

“So…you really don’t get out much, huh?” Dean remarked with a crooked grin, and Sam tried to hide his—reaction by introducing them properly, heart thumping uncomfortably in his chest.

 

“Bela, this is Detective Harvelle, the officer assigned to my father’s case. Dean—” He tried not to startle at the force of Dean’s grin, with limited success, and hurried on. “This is Bela.”

 

“Pleased to meet you, Bela,” Dean answered quite seriously, offering a hand for her to sniff as if he didn’t have traces of canine saliva drying on his face. Sam instantly clamped his own hand over her widening jaws.

 

“Not. Food.”

 

“She really a biter?” Dean asked, sounding skeptical but frowning in the direction of her closed-mouth smirk.

 

 _Only if you ask really nicely._

 

“No,” Sam told them both. Then, just to Dean, “Not unless provoked, or ordered. _Asked_ ,” he edited to appease her affronted huff. “She’s…simply rather protective of me.” And she would be, until their task was complete.

 

“Oh.” Dean shrugged, as if this made sense. “Well, no worries, Bela, I’ve got your person’s best interests at heart.”

 

 _Did you hear that?_ Bela said, moving to lean coquettishly against Dean’s legs. _His intentions are honorable._

 

 _Not food,_ Sam thought again, but didn’t speak it aloud on the chance he might have been addressing himself.

 

“How long have you been planning on coming to the states?” Dean asked, conversationally, as he flipped up the passenger’s seat for Bela to jump in the back. “Don’t these quarantine things take, like, months?”

 

“She wasn’t actually in quarantine—the plane I rode in from Innuvik simply didn’t have space for her, so I was forced to find an alternate means of transportation. With the correct paperwork it’s actually not that difficult to bring domesticated animals to or from Canada,” Sam said, none of which was a lie, and he looked at his reflection in the Impala’s shine. “Being half wolf she’s less susceptible to diseases, and I keep her updated on all of her shots.”

 

“Huh.” Dean didn’t speak again until he was fastened in behind the steering wheel. Then, after a beat, “You wanna go back to that part about being half wolf?”

 

Bela smirked and nudged Sam to tell him about the other half, which was not something that was ever going to occur.  
 

Sam was good company when he let himself be. Even thought it nearly took a crow bar getting him out of that marching band jacket. (Dean tried to talk him out of the uniform entirely—oh, come on, not like that—but Sam insisted he only had a couple outfits in his duffle and he wanted to keep them clean.) It did take a rousing chorus of, “ _Seventy-six trombones did—fuck all! While a hundred and ten corn…ucopias blew their…horns,_ ” before Dean ran out of words he was willing to admit he knew. Luckily Sam’s patience cracked right about the same time.

 

Hearing Constable Samuel Winchester snap, “Fine! _”_ and shed the coat like it was doing him some personal injury? Dean was already having to make an effort not to spontaneously grin, and didn’t think that was going to change any time too soon.

 

He _really_ needed to get out more.

 

“I’m surprised you even know the tune,” Sam said as he shoved his jacket into a neat folded pile. He was almost un-Canadian about it, which was kind of awesome, but the way he held his shoulders under his sparkling white Henley like he wasn’t sure how to stand…well, it got rid of Dean’s case of the grins real quick.

 

So he just waved it off, watching Bela dismiss them both with a snort before prancing off to check out his digs. “My dad loved those cheesy Broadway tracks. He’d keep them running while we worked on the car— _Oklahoma_ _!_ and _Kiss Me Kate_ and _South Pacific_ —over and over and over, like books on tape, you know? Used to drive me nuts. Much more of a Black Sabbath/Metallica kinda guy myself.”

 

“I gathered,” Sam said, dry as the dust in the corners of Dean’s kitchen. He turned to the collection of CDs and records Dean had shelved next to his piece-meal entertainment system. “Did you have a favorite? Or at least a musical you disliked less than the others?”

 

He felt a smile pull at his mouth and let it go. So he wasn’t the only one getting read, here. “Tunes-wise, guess you can’t go wrong with _Show Boat_. Miserable as fuck for most of the damn play, but Old Man River’s a classic, plus, you know, Fish Gotta Swim,and ‘ _Only make believe I love you, / Only make believe that you love me_ …’”

 

He trailed off when he noticed Sam’s fingertip had caught on the edge of a picture frame, but the instant Dean took a breath his hand was gone, touching another photo that was more prominently displayed. “Is this him? Your father?”

 

“Yep. Day we finished the car.” Dean was grease-streaked and scrawny in the picture, Bill Harvelle’s meaty, muscled arm slung over the near-fragile shape of Dean’s shoulders. They were laughing so hard it hurt to look at too long. Dean made a point to look at least once a day.

 

“He smiles like you,” Sam said, which caught Dean off-guard.

 

“Doesn’t everyone smile like their dad?” he blurted before his brain had time to scream what an absolutely bad idea that could be. Sam closed off, lips pinched in a thin line, and maybe it was because he hadn’t really been this close before but Sam looked…young. Or too old for himself. Probably both.

 

Sam looked sharply at something over his shoulder like someone had said his name, but he was just checking on Bela, who’d draped herself all over his couch. She cocked her head at them both.

 

“Is that your plan, then?” Sam asked, replacing the photo exactly before he took a step back, hands locked behind him. “To ‘make believe’ in our friendship until we suddenly…are?”

 

Okay, skipping back a few steps in the conversation. And still, _really weird thing to say._ “Sam,” he said, as far away from the ‘freak’ tone of voice as he could be on short notice, “that’s how making friends works. Sometimes,” he added fast, because, fuck, way to give a guy a complex, plus what the hell did Dean know about it, really? His friends hadn’t exactly stuck around.

 

“This isn’t like—I’m not trying to manipulate you,” Dean tried again, “I think we’d be pretty good friends, if you’d let me, and this is the American way of doing that without talking about our feelings. Which you have effectively shot all to hell. By the way.”

 

“Why are you so hell-bent on being kind to me?” Sam’s voice was tightly controlled, his hands clenched at his side; Dean didn’t think he realized he was doing it.

 

Still, the words punched some kind of breath out of Dean’s chest, and he tipped sideways until the record shelf caught and propped him up. Jesus. So that’s why his instincts had been screaming to stay off the topic of Sam’s dad. Who obviously hadn’t hugged his kid nearly enough in his life. Dean hoped for a brief second that Sam’s mom was kickass enough to make up for that, before he remembered reading ‘deceased’ next to the ‘spouse’ box in John Winchester’s file and a date that meant Sam would’ve been pretty young when she’d died. Shit.

 

Kind of screwed with your worldview, that there existed someone that didn’t want to touch Constable Samuel Winchester, and how fucking unfair that that someone had been his father.

 

“My mom owns a roadhouse out on the edge of our hometown, back in Kansas,” Dean said when he could scrape up the words, folding his arms over his chest so they wouldn’t be tempted to wrap around anyone else. “One of those—she got it from her Daddy who got it from his, that sort of thing. She’d take in strays once in a while, people who really needed it, but she could always tell the deatbeats from the ones who’d been beat down, right? So then one day, she goes out for Pretzels and when she comes back, whole roadhouse is in flames. Some idiot didn’t stub his cigarette out or something. But there’s this guy running around outside grabbing people off the street, filling their arms with buckets and unwinding garden hoses and making sure everyone got out alright, and he saved the roadhouse, minimal damage. This guy, turns out he’s second in command over at the local firehouse, and all because my mom took him in and gave him a place to stay when he didn’t have the cash to buy a pack of gum. ‘S my dad, of course. Uh.”

 

Dean was suddenly really conscious of how worn this story sounded, how much he was talking, _period._ He looked down at his shitkickers and then back up at Sam. “Point is. Saving people, detecting things…It’s sort of the family business. And I don’t think you’re a deadbeat, Sam, just a little beat down.”

 

“I…” Sam said after a very quiet moment, “I hope you are not wrong.”

 

Dean was finding it harder and harder to feel bad about Corporal Winchester’s death. He pasted on a grin anyway. “I got good instincts. Speaking of which, you like pineapple on your pizza?”

 

Sam looked startled, like he’d never heard something so ridiculous. Dean’s heart was going to break. “I don’t rightly know.”

 

“Well, you will rightly know in about forty minutes. And I got half an apple pie left, so we’re set for dessert. You wanna see if there’s anything on the tube?”

 

Sam nodded like it’d been an order and marched over to the TV, and Dean went to go get the phone so he could give his sigh to Evangelo’s.

 

Bela was waiting for him by the kitchen, yellow-gold eyes fixed on him like they’d been watching for a while.  
 

“You wanna know about that picture?”

 

Sam blinked, looking up from his pie with his fork half way to his mouth. “What picture?” The last time he’d checked they were in the middle of watching a really appalling game of hockey, not some special on modern art.

 

“The one you were poking at behind the one of my dad.”

 

“Ah.” Sam looked down at his dessert, ignoring the heavy feeling in his stomach. Then he shook himself off, pasting on a polite smile. “It’s none of my business—I shouldn’t have been ‘poking’ at all.”

 

Dean shrugged, infinitely easy in his skin in a way Sam, even when he wasn’t pretending to be someone else, could never accomplish. “I don’t mind. It’s not like I’ve got anyone else to go poking at things.”

 

That didn’t make sense. “Your family—?”

 

He snorted and let his beer bottle rest on the cut of his hip, faintest line of skin slipping free from the folds of his t-shirt. “Yeah…uh, you met Jo?”

 

“Yes.” Sam jerked his eyes back up to Dean’s face, but the detective’s gaze was following the play of colors across the television screen. “Ah, she seemed rather…headstrong.”

 

“That’s one word for it, said Chester’s father,” Dean hummed, but Sam didn’t understand the cultural reference. “Never mind. She doesn’t come over much since we see each other most every day at the precinct, and Mom’s way back in Lawrence, so…”

 

“But—“ Sam felt incredulity twitching at the corners of his expression. “Don’t you have friends?”

 

Dean laughed, and Sam blushed helplessly, not happily, at the self-deprecating tone. “You mean like cop friends?” Dean asked, looking over for the first time in what seemed like…too long. “Or regular friends? ‘Cause either way, Cassie got most of them in the divorce.”

 

“Oh.” The photograph Dean had mentioned was one of him embracing a beautiful young woman with dark skin and even darker hair, which glowed against the snowy satin of her wedding gown. They’d both looked so happy, so young. And Dean now, divorced, already a detective— A question flitted across his mind and he grasped at it, shoved it in the open so he wouldn’t be tempted to think on ways their marriage could have ended. “How old are you?”

 

Dean’s eyebrows arched. “I’m twenty six, dude.” Then, before Sam could stammer an apology, his expression turned thoughtful. “You?”

 

“Twenty-two this May,” Sam answered dutifully, but looked away before he could see Dean’s expression turn into something pitying and condescending for being so young.

 

“Holy shit. Think you’re gonna stop growing any time soon?”

 

It startled a laugh out of Sam, short and sort of choked off, but it was just—so hard to remind himself not to underestimate Dean when being surprised like this felt—

 

 _Dangerous,_ Bela warned, leaning heavily against Sam’s leg as she fixed Dean with a hard stare. _Sam,_ she added, turning up her muzzle, _I’m all for you making new friends—_ a sweet flash of skin and rough, fierce rutting snapped through Sam’s mind, making him stiffen in shock— _but this isn’t the time. You do remember why we’re here, don’t you?_

 

“Yes.” Sam cleared his throat and tried again, frustrated and distressed at the latent hoarseness in his tone. “Yes, ah, right you are.” He stood too abruptly to allow any coltishness in his knees and strode to the door, unlocking and opening it for Bela to slip into the hall.

 

Dean’s hand landed on his arm and Sam belatedly realized Dean had been verbally objecting to the move as well. His eyes were too intense, too close, a frown wrinkling his brow as his mouth opened to apologize for whatever he’d done to make Sam go.

 

“I was just letting Bela out,” Sam said, voice quiet and controlled. He felt…young around Dean. Sam shouldn’t have asked after his age.

 

“Oh.” Dean’s lashes captured Sam’s attention when he blinked, and Sam hauled himself back inside his own skin, where he belonged. “I, uh. Do you want some company?”

 

A small spark of paranoia that felt so much like his father whispered that Dean wanted to keep an eye on him, keep him from running off. Sam did his best to smother it. “Oh, no, she’s quite alright on her own.”

 

Dean stared at him. “You’re letting your half-wolf pet wander the streets of Chicago alone, when you yourself said she’s used to being out in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere—“

 

“Tuktoyaktuk is hardly—” Sam bit off his words, that spark banking into anger. “She is in no way naïve to danger or incapable of protecting herself.”

 

“She’s a _dog,_ ” Dean stressed after a fraction of a beat that was meant to remind Sam of whom they were _not_ speaking of. Bela still made her disgust known. “And I don’t want to see you get crushed when she walks out that door and never—“

 

Bela twined herself around Dean’s legs, almost overbalancing him—enough that he had to grasp Sam’s shoulder or risk toppling over. This close, Sam could feel the echo of her acceptance as she pushed it into Dean’s mind.

 

He yanked Dean away from her without thought, earning a startled and disgruntled noise from them both.

 

 _Samuel—!_ Bela hissed, and he slammed up all of his mental barriers. He didn’t need her in his head to know she was leaving in a huff. She didn’t need to look to know he was glaring furiously and helplessly at the back of her head.

 

Which left Dean in Sam’s arms, almost flush against his chest.

 

“What,” Dean said, eyes cloudy and confused as he nearly caught Sam’s jaw shaking his head. “What just happened?”

 

Sam had to work his throat more than once before sound came out, and he hated himself for it. “I let Bela outside.”

 

“Oh. Okay.” Dean squeezed Sam’s biceps absently and let go. “It’s okay.”

 

Sam felt shaken, unsteady down to his core. Like a tree under the first blow of an ax, left clinging to its strength under the inevitability of falling. “Dean…” The name came out strangled, barely recognizable. Inaudible, as it turned out, under the clank and clatter of Dean gathering up their dishes.

 

“Hey, you want anything else?” Dean called, juggling their plates as he headed for the kitchen. “I’ve got a couple beers in the fridge.”

 

A real Mountie would’ve said, “No, thank you, I don’t drink,” as easy as breathing. Sam had to take a couple breaths before the words would come.

 

~*~

 

The chesterfield, as he assured Dean many times, was plenty comfortable enough to sleep on without the added hassle of turning out the bed part of it, so he kipped there, surprised at how well he could stretch out. Guilt and something worse was still gnawing at his insides, daring him to actually attempt sleep, and Dean’s apartment was faintly cooler in the dark— _Or,_ something like Bela’s voice crooned, though she was still out prowling, _perhaps it’s simply colder without Dean by your side_.

 

“Don’t be foolish,” he muttered to himself and turned over to regulate his own breathing, closing his eyes as the city rumbled restlessly outside the window, sirens and cars melting gradually into darkness and—

 

 _It’s silent, the way the tundra is when he presses his face to the moss and breathes in earth and green and cold, fresh air. When he reaches above his head with heavy, clumsy hands to touch the cotton moons and stars as they twirl over his head. He’s so small, he’s too small to survive out here in the wilderness, in this room with the cracked ceiling and broken paint, with endless black tables and curling, peeling carpet. His feet catch, his hands catch against a rusting metal sign and slice, smearing blood across the letters—wrong way down a One Way Drive and he can feel traffic moving through him, under him, beneath his unsteady feet. Thin pale fingers that aren’t his touch the wound, gentling, then dig in cuttearripping with their nails and he chokes gasps—_

 

Ssssssammy. _It’s Meg’s voice and his mother’s face, twisted and cruel and his bones snap against the floor when he falls but it’s not the ceiling it’s not not yet. She’s broken and black-eyed, blood slicked hand curled around the Colt, yellow eyes bleeding through the darkness behind her and he takes a breath to shout—_

 

 _Something wet and vile drips into his mouth, flooding his throat, making him gag. He can’t heave, he can’t turn over to retch, and his heart is thudding too fast too fast crying he’s crying mom mom mom mom mom—_

 

 _Sharp, sting of wetness on his forehead, like he’s crying upwards, sideways wrong. Drip. Dripdrip. There’s a hand, not mom’s, dad’s, and Sam wraps his whole fist around his father’s thumb, holding on, but he’s not really there, can’t be there, dead so dead dead and gone it doesn’t make sense there’s_ something on the ceiling and it’s DEAN.

 

 _Dean’s body convulsing as the flames explode around him, screaming screaming screaming Dean is screaming—_

  
 

“Sam?!” Dean hit the hardwood and slid, probably fucking up his knees but he didn’t care, Sam’s fevered shouting ringing in the pieces of his skull still fighting to wake up. And then—Shit, god _, fuck_ , Sam was _bleeding._ The cut was high on his temple, probably caught it on the edge of the coffee table when he fell off the couch. Dean’s thumb skid in the trail of blood as it trickled down his face, smearing it across Sam’s cheek, and he forgot, just for a moment. “ _Sammy_?”

 

“It’s Sam,” Sam croaked after a breathless moment, prying apart his blood-sticky eyelashes to peer up at Dean, openly confused and shaken. Like he wasn’t used to being braced or held or touched at all. _Or maybe_ , Dean reminded the snap-crackle-pop of his nervous system, _maybe he’s just not used to having his face groped by a cop._

 

“Are you—What the fuck just happened?” Dean demanded, and just couldn’t make himself let go yet. A cold chill ran down his ribs, under the loose fabric of his Chicago Bulls t-shirt. “Wait, shit, did someone attackyou?”

 

Because he’s a cop, and it’s a weird fucking case, and his first thought should have probably been _intruder._

 

“What? No!” Sam gasped, hands locking around Dean’s wrists when he jerked back, preparing to stand up and march around his apartment looking dangerous. Which was pathetic, yeah, alright, but god Dean needed to do _something_ to feel useful. And then Sam blinked those strangely beautiful eyes up at Dean and frowned. Hard, but still shaky around the edges, like he wasn’t quite sure he was awake. “What are you doing in here?”

 

“U-uh.” Okay, no way was he supposed to be tripped up by that. But really. What the hell did Sam think? “Oh I dunno, maybe I was looking for a beer.”

 

“At—“ Sam twisted under him and Dean froze, body so still it hurt, but Sam’s eyes were focused entirely on the clock on the VCR. “Three in the morning?”

 

Dean really wanted to laugh, maybe say, _Hey, you caught me,_ and keep Sam in this place where he wasn’t closed off and untouchable. But Sam wasn’t picking up on sarcasm, and that was kind of freaking him out.

 

“I heard you hit the floor.” Sam’s grip went slack, but the blood under Dean’s thumb was tacky, keeping their skin stuck together even when Dean’s tone came out with an edge. “And then I heard you hit the table.” Probably what the second thump was. His hands moved without permission to the back of Sam’s head, checking for bumps under the mess of his hair, but at least that was better than— It wasn’t holding Sam’s face anymore. He sat back on his haunches with a short, biting sigh, worked on keeping his hands to himself. “And then you started shouting my name. Like a fucking banshee. I’m going to have to call my landlady and tell her I wasn’t having rowdy sex.”

 

Sam’s cheeks darkened, even in the dim city light filtering through the window shades, even under the messy smear of blood.

 

“Or murdering somebody,” Dean added, because that’s what it’d really sounded like. Like someone was out here gutting Sam in his living room. He gripped his own thighs and fixed Sam with the hardest glare he had in his arsenal this early in the morning. “So. Bad nightmare? Or you got some sort of epilepsy you forgot to tell me about.”

 

Sam’s mouth fell open, and then shut, and stayed shut. There was some irrational piece of Dean that thought this was progress, but he couldn’t for the life of him understand why.

 

“Heart attack,” Dean said, eyebrows raised as he pointed a quick finger from his bedroom door to right here, “Three in the morning. Awkward landlady conversation. Dude, I am so entitled.”

 

“It’s nothing,” Sam said, pushing away and rolling to his not-so-steady feet. “Just a bad dream.”

 

“About what?”

 

Sam sighed, so exhausted he made Dean’s chest ache. “Lollipops and candy canes.”

 

Dean stood up, braced stance at the ready in case he needed to catch a guy, but Sam flinched away like Dean was making a grab for him. Dean unlocked his jaw and asked anyway. “You wanna talk about it?”

 

“ _No,_ ” Sam snapped. His hands came up and dug in at his temples, face crumpling in pain, and Dean’s nails cut deep half-circles into his own palms. “Sorry. I mean, I apologize. It’s just a headache.”

 

“Yeah?” Yeah, right. “You want some Tylenol or something?”

 

That Sam didn’t say ‘Thank you kindly’ with his shaky nod shouldn’t have set Dean’s heart skittering again. He really needed to cut back on the cheeseburgers. And figure out what the hell was tripping every alarm down the nerves in his back.

The instant Dean ducked inside his bathroom Sam walked as quickly and quietly as he could to the kitchen chair holding his rucksack— _duffle,_ he thought viciously against the headache tearing at the back of his eyes—and shoved one hand inside, all the way to the bottom. His fingers hit metal, cool and familiar, and something in him dipped a little with relief before he reminded himself that it could be a decoy.

 

Wrestling the object from the grip of his clothing, he tried not to think about Dean’s thumbprint drying in the blood on his cheek. It wasn’t important. He had other—

 

The Colt slipped free, heavy and perfect in his palm, every nick and scar in place. So Meg didn’t have it yet. _Thank god._ He sagged against the table, gun solid where it was cradled against his belly. His eyes started to slide shut but his lashes clumped uncomfortably together, and he had to blink several times before his vision cleared.

 

When it did, Dean was standing at the edge of the kitchen, staring at him.

 

“Sam,” he said, very carefully, every line in his body rigid, “I am ninety-nine percent sure you’re not allowed to carry a gun in this country.”

 

Some small part of Sam wanted to ask how he was so sure, but he was too exhausted to make sense. “It was my father’s.”

 

“I don’t care. Could you please put it on the table?”

 

He felt his jaw set in a grim line, but obeyed for the simple reason that Dean very much cared, no matter what he said—it was written in every line of his face. The instant he heard the thump of metal hitting wood he jarred back into himself, fighting the fierce instinct to snatch it up again. Dean had been out of his sight, something could have—

 

“Christo,” Sam blurted, fingers hovering over the weapon.

 

“What?” Dean snapped, eyes even greener than before with the flash of annoyance.

 

“It’s nothing,” Sam mumbled, feeling rot down in the lining of his stomach, and stepped away.

 

Dean didn’t grab the gun like he probably wanted to, but picked it up carefully, turning it over in his hands and visibly relaxing at the worn feel of it under his hands. “Your dad’s, huh? Some sort of antique?”

 

Sam opened his mouth to answer honestly—stupidly, but maybe the story of Samuel Colt would be enough to distract him—when Dean spun the chamber and stopped breathing.

 

“Sam,” he said, every muscle taught enough to tear as he raised his eyes, “there’s only one bullet in this gun.”

 

A gasp caught in his throat, and he coughed it back out on the words, “It’s not for me!”

 

Dean’s expression contorted, then— “That’s _worse._ Fuck! _Sam—_ ”

 

“Worse than the thought of me killing myself?” Sam asked, as if he were twelve again and couldn’t help rebelling against authority, even when it could mean there would be no one left to look after him.

 

Dean’s eyes were wide, demanding that Sam follow his train of thought. “You as good as told me you came to Chicago—“

 

“—on the trail of the killers of my father—“

 

“—in order to _kill them._ ” The Colt was in his hand, butt towards Sam like it was being offered, and it should have been easier to focus on that instead of Dean’s stunned, accusing gaze. “Do you realize how off the reservation that is? You think that’s what your dad would want? What about the Mount—“

 

Sam, who’d opened his mouth to explain just exactly _what_ his father would like, fuck you kindly, was cut off by the jarring ring of a phone.

 

Dean shut up like he’d been slapped.

 

 _Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring._

 

“Your landlady?” Sam offered, dully. Dean twitched towards the phone.

 

 _Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring._

 

“She’ll call the Lieu if I don’t pick up,” Dean said like he was asking Sam for a reason not to answer it. Sam blinked blandly, as if he didn’t understand.

 

 _Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—_

 

“Son of a bitch!” Dean snarled to no one in particular as he snatched up the phone and punched ‘talk.’ “Yeah, hi, Mrs. Mosely, I’m sorry for the racket—”

 

“Good morning, Detective,” the definitely male voice in his ear droned, then coughed out the word, “Douchenozzle,” like Dean wouldn’t be able to hear him on speaker phone.

 

Dean’s jaw started to ache from how hard he was clenching it. “Zeddmore?”

 

“Yeeees?”

 

“It is officially ungodly o’clock in the morning and I own a gun.” His stomach cramped when he realized whose gun exactly he was holding. _One bullet, just one bullet,_ and he’d been lying when he said intent to murder was worse but only by a little bit. _What the fuck do I really know about Sam?_ Dean set the gun down on the kitchen counter—he just couldn’t touch it any more. He had this notion that Sam was meant to be good and do good, and where had that come from? How did he know so deep in his gut that that was true?

 

“Funny, Harvelle, really—just hilarious,” Ed’s (possibly) heterosexual life partner Harry jumped in. “Seeing as it’s _your_ fault we had to work this late in the first place.”

 

“ _Yeah,_ ” Ed added, right on cue.

 

“What are you bitching about?” Dean forced a bored-sounding sigh, turning just a little closer to the wall like he could protect himself from a potentially career-altering forensics fuck-up.

 

“Uh…the funhouse photos? You and the Mountie touched ‘em?”

 

“Yeah, and they were on top of his desk, just like I said.” Smooth, Dean. “So what’s the issue?”

 

“You didn’t take the Mountie’s fingerprints,” Zeddmore said like this was painfully obvious and pathetically dumb, all in one go. “To rule his out of the big butt load of prints we did find!”

 

“His prints’ll be on record,” Dean snapped, “just like every other cop. So just—”

 

“Yeah, but they _aren’t._ That’s what I’m telling—”

 

“We’re telling—”

 

“We’re telling you,” Harry finished with a nod Dean didn’t have to see.

 

He pinched the bridge of his nose like that would keep his brain from exploding and dribbling out his nostrils. “No, come on, guys, you typed it in wrong or something. Winchester, like the rifle. Sam—” He turned.

 

Sam’s hat was still balanced on the arm of Dean’s sofa. Sam’s gun, Sam’s bag, and Sam Winchester were no longer in the apartment.  


Once upon a time, Dean had a normal cop-like job, an average work-is-my life, where he didn’t get welcomed to Canada in the middle of the night (in the middle of _Chicago_ _)_ by a guy wearing long johns with a really bad habit of _not blinking_.

 

“Inspector Tiel?” Dean asked, somehow managing to sound only about one tenth of how on edge he really was. As soon as he got his badge back in his pocket he was clutching it hard enough to make his knuckles ache.

 

“Call me Cas,” the man said in an intense, gravely monotone, and shook Dean’s hand.

 

“Uh, okay. Cas.” Dean would call him honeypie if it got him to a certain cat-eyed Mountie. “Is Sam Winchester in, by any chance?”

 

“Constable Winchester,” Cas corrected, which just—No, whatever. “No, I don’t believe so. He expressed an intention to stay with you.”

 

 _Great, he’s speaking Canadian._ Dean swallowed something ugly and made himself ask. “Right. Was there anything weird about Constable Winchester’s transfer?”

 

“He didn’t transfer,” Cas droned, blinking for the first time, “If that’s what you mean.”

 

“You had him on guard duty,” Dean pointed out, biting back the urge to slam Call-Me-Cas in a chair and shine a light in his eyes. “Why would you do that if he was staying as a guest?”

 

“…Duty to his country,” the Inspector said, as if Dean were a special brand of American stupid.

 

“Were his papers in order, did he show you his license to ride a horse—anything that proved he was who he said he was?”

 

“Oh, he is John Winchester’s son, no doubt about that.”

 

“…Would you care to elaborate?” _Before I punch you in the head._

 

Cas let out something almost like a sigh, and Dean realized for the first time that for all he was being welcomed to Canada, he hadn’t been asked to step inside the door. “I had a passing acquaintance with John Winchester, but even so the man had a certain reputation that preceded him. After his wife died, the RCMP let him have free reign in the territories—he had an uncanny ability to show up wherever he was needed. A real sixth sense, you might say.”

 

 _Yeah, or…_ Dean thought, and cut off that thought before it could do more than send a chill down his spine. “And he just dragged Sam around with him? He would’ve been pretty little when his Mom died,” if he was remembering the dates right off the top of his head.

 

“Round about six months old, I heard,” the Inspector nodded. “I believe John had some network of friends who’d take care of Constable Winchester when he had to be elsewhere, but I don’t rightly know.”

 

Constable Winchester. As if he’d always been a Mountie, this little bundle of red serge. The question was already out of his mouth before he had a chance to vet it and send it far away.

 

“He and his dad get along alright?”

 

“Fairly,” Cas mused, eating up that unwarranted feeling of relief and spitting it out half chewed. “There was some big to-do over Constable Winchester attending college instead of following his father’s footsteps… But that was just before I left. It’s hard to get news from home. Obviously he came around.”

 

Or… Dean thought about the hat he had in the passenger’s seat of his car.

 

“How do you know—” His throat caught and he had to stop to clear it. “How do you _know_ the man on your doorstep yesterday was Sam Winchester?”

 

Inspector Tiel full-out scowled at him, which translated to his eyebrows going a little crooked. “He had the Colt. Everyone knows that Colt’s been in the Winchester family for generations.”

 

“Yeah? What’s so special about it?” God damn that gun. Why had he put it on the fucking counter? How had Sam grabbed it without moving in Dean’s peripheral vision?

 

“Part of the mystery. Five generations of Canadian Winchesters and they wound up with an original American gun.”

 

“Huh.” Okay, not as interesting as he was hoping. “Did Sam give you any sort of indication of where he might go? Sights he wanted to see? Anything?”

 

 _Please, please let there be something._

 

“Well,” Cas said, and Dean’s gut squirmed, “he did show an interest in visiting the Chicago Public Library—”

 

“Hallelujah!” Dean exclaimed, hands actually up in the air because if he didn’t do that he was going to do something stupid. Stupid _er_. Like hug the Chief Inspector of the Canadian Consulate. Who looked genuinely startled, in a surprisingly human way. “Thank you for your time. Also, you might want to wave some air fresheners around. At this moment in time I don’t give a damn but people are going to start thinking this is a frat house.”

 

Cas had really blue eyes when they were this wide. “My subordinates, I assure you. They have been severely punished.”

 

“Right.” _Do not care_ , Dean added as silently as he could when he turned and all-but ran back to the Impala. The engine gunned with a deft twist of his hand, and Dean didn’t let himself look at the lump of empty red wool in the passenger’s seat, didn’t let himself think about what he’d do if Sam wasn’t there.

 

He was all the way to Pritzker Park—a five minute drive he made in two—the Harold Washington Library looming in the beams of his headlights, when he realized the dim glow of his radio was telling him there was no way in hell the library was open. There was no way in hell Sam _could_ be there, unless he was sitting outside waiting for people to unlock the doors. The Impala rumbled quietly as Dean’s foot eased off the gas, but he coaxed her around the block, the building, then back the other way to peer into the shadows from a different angle. No Sam.

 

He parked on autopilot, and let his head rest against the steering wheel. “Now what?” he asked himself, not in any way expecting an answer.

 

A low, feral growl snapped his head back up, bringing him eye to golden, slitted eye with—

 

“Bela?” Oh dear god he hoped it was Bela on his hood, because otherwise he was going to get eaten by a wolf in downtown Chicago. At least if it was Bela eating him he could claim it made some sort of sense.

 

She snarled, and the tightening of her throat bared just enough of the silver chain around her neck to catch the light. Dean’s heart was still jackrabbiting, even with solid plate glass and—even as sturdy as his baby was, Bela’s weight should’ve been denting the hood at least a little. Instead it was like she weighed nothing at all, a wolf-shaped shadow that could still do some serious damage. The sight unnerved him just enough that he could tear his eyes away to look for Sam.

 

No luck. God, would it kill him to have just a _little_ luck?

 

“Hey, now,” he snapped over her growling, “Do I look like someone who’s going to hurt Sam?”

 

He didn’t expect her to shut up, so the sudden silence made him flinch. She pressed her nose against the glass, almost like she was daring him to meet her startlingly intense stare.

 

Was he going to hurt Sam? Had he already? The questions pressed in on his mind with a feeling of edged concern, the smell of Sam— _the smell of Sam?_

 

He jerked back against his seat, Sam’s scent so thick in his mind it felt like he was drowning in it, and when Bela’s head cocked to one side he saw the charms dangling from her collar, pentagrams, letters in languages he didn’t understand, and tiny engraved disks with marks like the one Meg had made in entrails.

 

Maybe he wasn’t the one who would hurt Sam.

 

 _Don’t be ridiculous._

 

Dean gasped, and choked, and nearly pulled a muscle twisting to look for the fancy British woman who’d just spoken. “The _hell_ —?”

 

 _Please try not to be so incredibly stupid. Come on, now, use your big boy words…_

 

Dean shouted, “Screw you!” before he could think better of it. A soft snort yanked his attention back to the hood of the Impala, where, if he hadn’t known any better, he’d have said Bela was smirking at him.

 

 _Very Oscar Wilde,_ the woman’s voice said, and Bela’s tail wagged in time.

 

“Uh,” Dean said, staring as Bela’s teeth bared in a terrifying grin. “…Holy shit.”

 

 _Rather unholy, I should say._

 

“I don’t want to know,” Dean said quickly, shoving out his hands. If Sam was—if he wasn’t—Dean just didn’t want to know.

 

 _Too late for that now._ She settled on the hood, taking absolutely no care with her claws, and the roots of Dean’s molars ached even though the rest of him had much more important things to worry about than his baby’s paint job. Her ears flipped forward, then back. _I don’t understand why Samuel is not where I left him_.

 

Something in her phrasing rubbed Dean the wrong way. “Because he’s a human being, and they tend to wander off. Maybe you should invest in one of those baby-leash things.”

 

 _And who would hold the other end? You?_ It seemed really unfair that she could give looks that withering from under all that fur. _Dean, sweetheart, I don’t care what kinky little games you want to play with him. All I want to know is why he smells upset._

 

Dean really… He did not have an answer for that. He knew why _he_ was upset—being run off on did that to him—but he didn’t have a fucking clue why running from Dean would get to Sam unless…

 

He didn’t realize he was staring at the damn hat in his front seat until Bela disappeared from his mind like a gasp, and he barely looked up in time to see her leap off the hood of the Impala. His own feet hit the asphalt before he knew his hand was on the door.

 

“Wait—!”

 

Dean didn’t really like the Harold Washington in daylight, mostly because it was judging him for all the books he’d never read with his GED and a give-‘em-hell attitude. Now in the darkness, with a half-wolf-half-something-else prowling up to the massive entrance and gigantic fucking gargoyles leering down at them from the roof, it looked like something straight out of a bad horror flick. “Where’s the thunder and lightning when you need it?” Dean muttered as he caught up to her, but Bela just flicked her ears at him disdainfully.

 

The brass handle of the massive glass doors didn’t give under his tug (surprise, surprise), and he gave her a pointed look. She rolled her golden eyes and raised a hind leg to scratch behind her ear, looking decidedly bored.

 

“God damn it.” Dean shoved Sam’s hat—when had he grabbed it? He hadn’t meant to—on his head for safekeeping and fished his lock picking kit out of his favorite belt buckle. “I promised Singer I wouldn’t do this shit anymore without a warrant.”

 

Bela ignored him as thoroughly as if he wasn’t there, even when the door peeled back on its hinges and she slid inside.

 

He tried his best not to think about Sam getting in here the same way.

 

If Sam was being honest with himself, he wasn’t used to buildings being this massive. If he were outside the space would seem nothing at all, but here…with its polished marble floors and looming archways, corridors reaching through the stacks of more books than one person could hope to read like beckoning fingers… Sam felt small and inconsequential, which was nothing new. The library just amplified it somehow.

 

He sensed Bela’s whispering mind coming closer long before he heard her clicking nails on the marble. She’d been quietly nagging him to come let her in for the last hour before falling silent a few minutes ago, presumably having finally found her own way inside. Sighing, he flipped shut yet another worthless book as he stood and turned to face her. “If you knew there was a way to get—“

 

He stopped. So did Dean.

 

“Hey, Sam,” he said, voice hushed in the gaping expanse of the abandoned library, but no less solid, or real. The glow from Sam’s laptop, from the Exit and security lights, did nothing more than throw shadows across Dean’s pale, tense face, across the standard issue Stetson he had perched on his head. Sam’s hat. He was wearing…

 

Dean followed his gaze and took it off, knuckles fumbling clumsily along the brim. He hadn’t done more than throw on a pair of jeans and his leather jacket before coming after Sam, or he would’ve done something about the way his hair was still flattened on one side where he’d slept on it. “U-uh,” he said, less a word than a soft exhalation, and looked down at the hat in his hands. “Guess… Sorry, I thought you might need it.”

 

Sam had changed clothes behind a dumpster a block from Dean’s apartment, feeling ridiculous in the pumpkin pants without the rest of the uniform to distract from it. Now, though, he almost wished he’d attempted to hail a cab in the get-up just so he wouldn’t feel so exposed now, in a ratty pair of jeans and a Stanford hooded sweatshirt one size too big his father had picked up at a thrift store for him eons ago. Sam fingered the ragged hem and tried to remember how to breathe with his insides twisting into knots.

 

“And, fuck, your coat.” Dean shook his head as if he were angry with himself, glaring at the floor. “Unless you took it before you—left, it’s probably still in the closet.”

 

“Keep it,” Sam told him, shocked at how wrecked it came out, all because of that fractional pause.

 

Dean looked at him immediately. Sam had been shot before—almost paralyzed—but...this. Well, it didn’t really compare.

 

“Not really a Mountie, are you, Sammy?”

 

The childish nickname sent up a flare of anger, mostly in self-preservation, even as his muscles strained against a fierce need to stand at attention. “No,” he said, voice cold. “I’m not.”

 

“Why the hell did you say you were?” Dean lashed out, taking a furious step forward with his grip threatening the pressed brim of Sam’s hat. “You think I wouldn’t help you if you were just the guy’s _kid?_ ”

 

“ _You. Can’t. Help_.” Sam hit each word as hard as he knew how, teeth baring in a faint imitation of Bela, who’d made herself scarce. Naturally. Any time she would be of any use— Sam realized his hands were in the air before him, curling even as they shook. “It’s too— You just, you _can’t_ help me, Dean _._ No one can.”

 

“Look,” Dean said, voice low and even, “I know it may feel like that—“

 

“You were never good at cop talk, Dean,” Sam cut in, scathing.

 

His gaze flickered as he registered the hit, then Dean tried again, slower, hand outstretched the same way as when Sam had held the Colt. Dean said, slow and easy, not some persona, “I don't know exactly what happened to your dad, but I know it was something real bad. And I know—I know it has something to do with things I don’t understand. But you gotta give me the benefit of the doubt, here—“

 

“Why?” Sam snapped. Dean was advancing, and Sam’s back hit a wall before he realized he was retreating. He was in a shallow alcove, escape limited and it startled him, scared him into blurting more than he meant. “You don’t know me! You’ve known me less than a day, and I was _fucking lying_ to you.”

 

God, it felt good to say _fuck_ again, another grimy Mountie layer peeled off his skin, leaving it pink and sensitive but _his._

 

Something sparked in Dean’s expression at the word, bright enough that Sam could see it in the dark. Something like recognition. Like, _There you are. Knew you were in there somewhere._

 

Which—he couldn’t have. Known, or seen. Constable Samuel Winchester wouldn’t have let him.

 

Dean’s focus drifted to something on the wall over Sam’s shoulder, then settled back on him with a burning sort of calm as he took those last steps into Sam’s personal space. “I know good when I see it,” he said, voice echoing in the embrace of their alcove. “Sam…”

 

He dropped the hat, and years of childhood conditioning made Sam flinch but Dean was already smoothing down the folds in Sam’s sweatshirt like he was settling a skittish colt, before his fingers curled into the fabric and held on.

 

“I do know you,” Dean said, hard like it was truth, close enough now that their foreheads were brushing and Sam could taste Dean’s breath on his lips, count each of the lashes fanning across his cheek.

 

Sam ducked just enough to touch, then more.

 

The kiss was supposed to make Dean back off, was supposed to make him leave. He didn’t expect Dean to stay, to lean into him, to split open a chasm of need inside Sam that—Christ, that was going to gulp them down, burn them up. God. _God_. Sam choked on a cry and tried to rip free before the flames could lick his fingers, but Dean followed him, pressed his hands to Sam’s face and his mouth to Sam’s lips and his everything against Sam’s desperation.

 

It was so, so different from the last time he’d been kissed.

 

Dean’s hand wrapped around the back of Sam’s neck and angled him better, coaxing kisses from him, eating at his fraying control without ever using his tongue. Sam didn’t understand that line he wouldn’t cross, but he buckled under the want of breaking it. His nails cut into the leather of Dean’s jacket, bunching and leaving bruises when he wasn’t careful and reached for the skin underneath.

 

Dean had no qualms about getting under Sam’s clothes, rough fingers leaving gentle burning trails over Sam’s ribs, learning him by feel. Sam arched into the touches, choking against the need to mewl against Dean’s mouth.

 

“Come on, Sam,” he begged, and Sam shook. He didn’t have any more he could _give_. He didn’t know _how._

 

Dean’s hands stilled at his lower back, and for an frozen second Sam thought he’d found the Colt before he remembered it was tucked inside the bag near his feet. _No_ , he thought as Dean’s fingers slid hesitantly over his skin and Sam trembled so hard it left him gasping for air, _he’s found the scar._

 

He felt something shake loose in Dean too, and Sam broke, snapped, slammedDean against the wall still warm with his own desperate heat and Dean arched into him with a gasp like _yes._ Sam tore Dean’s hands off him, pinned them too tight over Dean’s head, biting his lips with the words. “You can’t— _you_ —“

 

“Yeah, I can…” Dean let out on a low, throaty sigh, sinking against the press of Sam’s hips as he turned his head and licked at Sam’s mouth. Sam gave instantly, panting hot around the slide of him, the taste of him, the smell—

 

Dean smelled like leather and heat, like energy, like life. Sam nearly killed himself pulling back from the ferocity of their kiss, but burying his face in the crook of Dean’s neck was like coming up for air.

 

“Come on,” Dean said against the shape of Sam’s ear, teeth brushing the whorls as he arched his neck when Sam bared his own teeth against Dean’s neck and tried not to bite down. “Come on, Sam.”

 

Sam obeyed, a helpless, almost juvenile snap of his hips that brought him flush against Dean, against the unmistakable hardness in his jeans. Pleasure shocked down his spine and pulled at his scar, distracting him just long enough for Dean to wriggle one hand free and bury it in Sam’s hair, tugging him back until their foreheads were touching and Sam was lost in the thrumming intensity of Dean’s gaze.

 

“—want you, Sam,” he heard Dean say over the roaring in his ears, voice just as raw as Sam felt, “I want you to. I want _you.”_

 

Sam didn’t know how to say yes with words—he barely knew how to say yes with his hands fumbling at Dean’s belt. It had been so long, so messed up and wrong the last time, and never with a man, never let himself do more than look and ache in silence. But he didn’t know how to say no, either. Not to Dean. When Dean’s free hand slid down Sam’s zipper to cup him, he let out a noise like he’d been holding his breath for his entire life.

 

Dean tugged his other arm free and Sam let him go, too shaky to do more than concentrate on holding himself upright as Dean helped Sam with his own buckle, moving to Sam’s before his jeans even slithered off his hips. Sam’s gaze got caught on the bared skin of his flanks—Dean had good thighs, meaty, made for holding onto and wrapping around his waist, and _where, how_ were these thoughts bubbling out of some dark place? Sam tried to let go—he hadn’t meant to grab at all, let alone grab so hard—but Dean canted his hips back into the touch until Sam’s hand was fit around the curve of his rump, pulling him closer as Dean’s fingers finally got Sam’s belt undone and dragged everything out of the way until Sam’s cock slapped against the cotton covering his belly.

 

Dean’s mouth, kissed dark and sweet, dropped into a soft _ohh…_ that Sam had to taste. He couldn’t bear Dean looking at him like that, didn’t he understand?

 

But he wanted to see Dean, as selfish and unfair as that was, and he ducked his head, hair falling into both their eyes. The shape of Dean in his black boxer briefs was obscene, straining the material, and Sam’s fingers were tracing the outline before he knew what he was doing, searching for a wet spot. There. Where Dean was wet for him, for Sam, and Dean’s breath stuttered in time to his hips.

 

Dean shoved his underwear down to his thighs and Sam didn’t move away fast enough to keep himself from catching Dean’s cock in his grasp. The heat was searing, the cry dragged from Dean’s throat tearing at the nerves in Sam’s spine where Dean’s nails were scrabbling for purchase.

 

“Good?” Sam stammered as he stroked Dean like he was drawing something ethereal from him. His grip faltered at the sound of his voice, the first word he’d spoken since this started.

 

“Yeah,” Dean panted, wide and wild eyed, “Yeah. _Yes._ ”

 

He stroked in earnest this time, trying to make up for his failings by neglecting his own aching length, but Dean let out a displeased noise and wrapped his gun calloused hand around Sam’s cock and pulled. Sam’s knees buckled and he fell against Dean, involuntarily shoving their damp heats together and a simultaneous groan from both their throats. Dean instantly ducked his head to bite at the shape of Sam’s tendons, his Adam’s apple, and Sam felt desperate panicky tendrils of imminent release curling in the soles of his feet.

 

He gasped out indistinct noises, blindly trying to ease back but Dean caught him, wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him close. “Hold onto me,” Dean ordered, his voice rough and beautiful, and Sam clutched at him before his brain could even process the words. Then Dean’s free hand wrapped around them both, and Sam forgot every language he’d ever learned.

 

His hips snapped vicious, brutal, knocking Dean’s hand away to fit himself against Dean as close as they would go, smearing semen over Dean’s belly and bruises down his hips as Sam’s vision went white. He heard, though, _everything._ Every wet slap of skin, every harsh desperate breath and the way it caught and keened when Sam’s writhing drove Dean over the edge. He felt his whole body contract with the first splash of Dean against his skin, felt it echo like a violent ripple through Dean’s frame. And when it threatened to give out, Sam was the one who held them steady, who pressed trembling numb kisses against Dean’s neck and jaw until he could feel the rasp of stubble against his mouth again.

 

Then Dean locked his shaking hands in the now-soiled Stanford sweater Sam still wore and sank down the wall, tugging Sam with him until they toppled and fell. Quite the pair, their pants around their ankles, trapped by their boots, sticky and pink in interesting places, fingerprints darkening over their skin.

 

“You—” Dean said before his chest even stopped heaving. Then his eyes caught on Sam, distracting him into giving Sam’s hoodie a weak tug. “Can’t believe I didn’t even get your shirt off,” he muttered, then dragged it over Sam’s head with a muddled single-mindedness that made Sam tip his head back against the wall and laugh until it hurt.

Dean’s brain was quiet in a way it hadn’t been in…pfft, he couldn’t remember. He was used to millions of things buzzing around in his head all the time; it was strange—he should have thought it was strange—that they’d all narrowed their focus to Sam. That he could do _this_ with someone who was little more than a stranger without phasing, but the thought of Sam out of his sight again made his heart clench in his chest.

 

This wasn’t entirely new, sex with a guy—part of why Dean’s marriage had gone so spectacularly to shit (though he hadn’t cheated. He hadn’t ever fucking cheated. But he’d been really badly tempted, and that had been enough). But this felt…new. Terrifying. Fucking fantastic but. Yeah. First time he had to pull his gun and first kiss rolled into one, exhilarating without the certainty of anything turning out well.

 

It looked like someone had had the bright idea to paint a library-relevant quote into each little alcove, and even with Sam in his arms Dean’s eyes kept drifting up the wall to the one etched above their heads.

 

 **There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.**

 **—Christopher Morley**

 

Dean sighed against the back of Sam’s neck, but Sam didn’t so much as twitch. He seemed content enough to be tucked between Dean and the wall, their clothes strewn under and around them, Dean’s fingertips tracing the inky flames of Sam’s tattoo.

 

Yeah. That had been a trip. Sam really, _really_ did not seem like the tattoo type. But Sam didn’t seem like the owner-of-a-talking-half-wolf-type either, so.

 

Which reminded him, kick-starting the voices right back up. “What’s the other half?”

 

Sam let out an annoyed grunt—which should not have made Dean nearly as happy as it did—and frowned at Dean through the mess of his bangs. Dean had to work hard not to grin as big as he wanted to when Sam mumbled, “Other half of what?”

 

“Bela,” he said, keeping his grip loose even when Sam tensed up. Suddenly it wasn’t so hard not to smile, though he did try. “She’s half wolf and half something else, right?”

 

“Naturally,” Sam said, quiet and hesitant, and Dean didn’t even breathe deep in case that tipped the scales into Constable Winchester territory. God, if he never saw Sam that closed off again it would be too soon. Wearing that uniform was like putting a tourniquet on his entire body.

 

“Yeah?” he prompted after a moment when Sam stayed silent. “So what is it?”

 

Sam had kept some form of contact since they’d settled down; now, though, Dean could feel his fingers tensing on Dean’s arm, like he didn’t want to let himself hold on. Jesus, Sam was going to break his heart. Or make his eyes roll. Possibly at the same time.

 

“Hellhound,” Sam said, very small.

 

“Whoa…” Okay, so he hadn’t prepared himself for that. “Like— _really?_ ”

 

Sam’s elbow caught him not entirelyby accident in the ribs as he flipped over. Maybe he shouldn’t have sounded quite so skeptical. “She spoke to you, didn’t she?” Sam accused, and that was easy enough to answer.

 

“Yep.”

 

“God damn her!”

 

“Well,” Dean drawled, unable to resist; Sam was _cussing_. Everything was hard to resist. “If she’s a hellhound, odds are pretty good— Alright, I’ll shut up,” he surrendered under Sam’s glare. Then his mouth twisted, not in a smile. “Is that what this is? Some sort of Satanist cult thing you’re a part of? Because…” He brushed a light nail over the pentagram in the circle of fire on Sam’s chest, and tried not to let himself notice the way Sam’s nipples pebbled. Talking dogs he could sort of wrap his head around… Fuck it, everything was so beyond him he didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted Sam to talk to him.

 

Sam pulled out of reach and loomed over him, frowning in a way that did not herald sexy times. Honestly, Dean was pretty okay with that; he’d come so hard he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get it up again right now in a room full of Sams with perky nipples. Well, maybe… In any case, it wasn’t that harshing his afterglow. He missed touching Sam.

 

“Actually, a pentagram is protection against evil,” Sam said in his you’re-being-schooled voice, so Dean slid his arms behind his head and raised his eyebrows, waiting. Definitely not smirking when Sam’s eyes got sidetracked to the shape of his biceps, following his skin down to the hollow of his throat. “Wait a moment,” Sam murmured absently, hands going to the back of Dean’s head and Dean thought, _okay, fuck a roomful of Sams,_ and leaned up to be kissed.

 

Instead, Sam yanked the bag Dean had been using as a pillow out from under him. Dean made sure to make noise so Sam knew he was Not Pleased, even if Sam was too distracted digging through the bag to notice. Dean felt a scowl tugging at his features, and then a small shiver of something ugly and unnamable smoothed them out.

 

Because seriously. He did not have any claim on Sam. And no real right to get post-coital kisses. Fucking God damn, why did he keep doing this to himself? Cassie—she’d definitely played the too clingy card more than once, and Dean knew enough guys to realize maybe it was true. That there was a fine line between trying too hard and showing you cared, and Dean didn’t know where the fuck that line was.  

 

He sat up and scooted back until he could prop up against a wall, as casual as you please with his insides tying into knots, just in time to catch a glimpse of brass in a fistful of leather strips Sam pulled out of the bag. And then Sam pressed it to Dean’s skin, right over his heart, and Dean’s gasp was less about cold metal than trying to get close enough to touch. Damn it. His fingers still tangled with Sam’s when he went to catch whatever it was, but that really wasn’t on purpose.

 

“It’s an amulet,” Sam said as Dean held it up to see, watching the tiny horned face twist between them, “It belonged to my father. Please wear it.”

 

Dean felt sucker-punched by this little piece of John Winchester and roundhouse-kicked to the head at that little ‘please,’ the determination on Sam’s face as he prepared for Dean to say no.

 

“Yeah,” he nodded dumbly, “Yeah, Sammy. Course. Okay.” _Shut up._ He bit the inside of his lip and— Christ, he’d made his mom take the clothes they donated to a charity out of town because the thought of seeing some guy walking around in his dad’s third favorite shirt made him nauseous. But Sam was giving him this?

 

Sam was suddenly on his feet, giving Dean a brief, relieved smile before he turned away to get dressed. And, don’t get him wrong, great view from back here, except for that white, knotted scar right at the small of Sam’s back. The one Dean hadn’t let himself think about since he’d found it, the one he’d known was a bullet wound with just that brief brush of his fingertips. Dean had one on his leg from a firefight busting a kidnapping ring, but there was a huge difference between getting shot in the fleshy part of his thigh and the vulnerable curve of Sam’s spine.

 

Dean stood before he knew he was going to move, but he got stuck. He couldn’t ask about that, could he? It wasn’t his—

 

“You get the guy who gave you that?” he asked, the rest of his mind apparently too distracted by putting on jeans to shut the fuck up. Lizard brain response, clingy scaly bastard whining _mine mine hurt Sammy_ —which just goes to show how fucking stupid reptiles are—but something in his cop brain kept him from taking it back.

 

Sam went still, deathly still, then tugged on his sweatshirt like if he could hide it they wouldn’t have to talk about it. Dean zipped up, fastened his belt, and waited.

 

“I was…I was dating this girl. In college,” Sam said, and holy fuck, it was one of the more American things Sam had ever said to him, using actual incomplete sentences and everything, and Dean _hurt_ with the urge to back Sam into a corner and hold him until everything bad went away. “She was,” Sam added, then broke off with a little twist of his head. “I wasn’t as careful… I thought once I was free of my father his world wouldn’t follow me. She was possessed. By a demon.” His eyes flicked to Dean’s. “Same as Meg Masters.”

 

Suddenly it didn’t seem so American any more—just…broken, and Dean felt like he was trying to breathe molasses. A sharp spike of pain snapped his attention to his palm, where he’d clenched his fist around the amulet hard enough for one of the small horns to draw blood.

 

And somewhere, behind that: _Demons. Hellhounds. Animal Sacrifices. Bodies that fall out of three story windows but get up and walk away._ All somehow true because…because animals don’t talk. Because Dean was good at reading people, and Sam wasn’t lying about this.

 

“I knew,” Sam said, this horrible little smile tugging at his mouth, “Not at first but. Near the end. Right at the end. Dad—my father,” he corrected, like he wasn’t allowed to call him that out loud, then shook his head and said, “He figured it out, he was going to exorcise her, and she was going to run before she let that happen. I was going to go with her.” He cringed and looked away, one hand jerking vaguely at his back. “He didn’t mean to hit me. It probably saved my life that he did.”

 

“Shit, Sam,” Dean said feeling every one of his twenty six years and coming up…really fucking inadequately prepared. Getting gut shot after a prize fight would be pretty close to how he was feeling, and he hadn’t even been the one to live through it. “I don’t—“ _know what to say._ What could he say? _Your dad should’ve learned how to fucking aim?_ It was pretty obvious Sam had jumped in front of the bullet.

 

He wanted—he _wanted_ to hug Sam, but even after all they’d done it seemed too intimate. Dean was a coward, fine. He was pathetic and insecure and he didn’t think he could take Sam shoving him away right now. Probably ever.

 

“Hey,” he said instead, forcing his hands to unclench and his cop brain to rise above the lizard one, “Hey, what happens to people when they get possessed? Do they have to be dead first for the demon to, you know…” He made a vague wiggly gesture with his fingers, but he didn’t really know how a demon crawled inside someone—they only showed the getting out in _The Exorcist_ and damn, that shit was messy.

 

Sam shook his head warily, like he didn’t like where he thought Dean was going with this. “Sometimes their victims are aware of what’s happening, sometimes they black out. She told me she was possessing a girl who’d been hit in a car crash and declared medically brain dead, that she was just trying to live a normal life.” Sam’s face told him how much he believed that now, how much he’d wanted to believe it then. Then his expression hardened, fixing those beautiful eyes on Dean without an inch of give. “I wasn’t trying to save her. She could have taken that bullet and lived. I was running— I got in the way of the shot. He thought I was running to stop her. I’m not _good,_ Dean. I was _leaving_ with her, a _demon._ ”

 

“With a woman you thought _loved_ you,” Dean said over him, because—Christ. If Sam couldn’t see that… “I would more than gladly take a bullet for someone I thought loved me.”

It hung in the air between them like some delicate, twisted rope bridge. Not somebody they loved—someone they thought loved them. More in common than you’d think, a flatfoot cop and a fake Mountie, even if what they had in common was the fact they’d gotten badly fucked up somewhere along the line when it came to healthy relationships.

 

Sam folded one arm over his chest and brought his other hand up to rub over his face. “Do you think we’re cursed?” he asked finally, almost a joke.

 

“Hey, you’d know better than me,” Dean said, running with it if it meant he might coax a smile from Sam any time in the future. Then he shrugged, not breaking eye contact. “I think we’re just a little… We got dark spots. Like a…bruised apple. You know?”

 

A faint tremor ran across Sam’s shoulders, and Dean tried not to let his heartbeat stutter when he recognized it as the start of a laugh. “Our dark spots are pretty dark.”

 

“You’re—dark,” Dean fumbled and looked down, because it was either that or kiss Sam stupid. He busied his hands with looping the amulet around his neck, putting his clothes on, automatically checking his watch.

 

 **5:53**

 

In seven minutes his alarm was going to go off telling him to wake up and go to work.

 

It hit him again, caught him by surprise because he thought some part of his brain had dealt with this. Work. Cop. Harboring a possible fugitive. Hell, fucking a possible fugitive. Illicit homosexual activities with— _shut up._ On top of breaking into a public library, which could maybe be spun to include the words ‘in the pursuit of’ but no one was seeing Dean whipping out his cuffs, were they? He looked at Sam, tired eyes, worn hoodie, everything about him fraying at the edges, and that was as familiar as breathing these days for Dean. Fuck, though. …Fuck. How did this happen? How did one day get him here?

 

“Is this the part where you panic and run?” Sam asked, his voice lowered and almost casual. Dean might have bought it if his eyes weren’t anywhere but meeting Dean’s. And okay. He could do this. He’d know what to do if he could just get a read on Sam.

 

“Maybe,” is what he said, but he really didn’t think so. It might have been saner to take off screaming, but whoever said Dean Harvelle was a rational human being?

 

Sam looked at him then, staring right down deep into Dean like he’d been able to from the first moment he’d stepped up to those cell bars. So Dean looked at himself too, looked for what Sam was looking for. Where was the paranoia that Sam had put a spell on him? Or the paranoia about not being paranoid, for that matter? Where the hell was the denial, the _this-isn’t-possible_ and _prove-it-to-me_ and _you’re-a-liar-I’m-calling-a-priest-and-the-loony-bin-in-that-order_? Where the hell was all this blind trust coming from, and could he call it blind trust when it felt like his eyes were wide open after a lifetime of being shut?

 

 _That’s it,_ he thought suddenly, stupidly, and nearly choked because he’d forgotten how to blink and gasp at the same time.

 

“This case,” he started, groping blindly for that tiny random thought. “One of the first cases I ever worked, I got called out on a homicide. Anthony Giles, bad rope burns on his wrists, throat slit so far you could see—” He looked away, his own throat working but afraid to swallow in case the rest wouldn’t come out. “I, uh. I tried questioning the wife but she was…freaking out. She kept saying her husband had been having nightmares about this woman with a slit throat and now shewas having the same nightmares...”

 

Sam was watching him too intently, or maybe the exact right kind of intently if he was thinking what Dean was half-hoping he wasn’t.

 

“We didn’t want to haul her in until we had something concrete from forensics saying she was involved somehow, so we left her in the house with a police guard, you know, for her protection. In case there really was an intruder. I was there first thing in the morning to bring her in for more questioning—”

 

“Killed?” Sam asked when Dean’s voice just up and quit on him.

 

He nodded, and that knocked something loose enough to talk. “Slit throat, same as her husband. Like, _exact_ same. Rope burns and everything.” Dean rubbed his own wrist without thinking about it, only noticing the gesture when Sam’s eyes fixed on his hands with something like muted fear.

 

“Did you have the nightmare too?” Sam asked like he didn’t want to know. Or like he wanted to reach out and touch Dean to make sure he was really there.

 

“I hadn’t slept in two days,” Dean said instantly, automatically, “I was in shock, running on coffee fumes, I—I don’t know. Yes. Yeah, I did.” And he felt something come free when he said it, a leech yanked off his skin. He’d felt the bruises appear out of nowhere like morbid, painful bracelets; he hadn’t been hallucinating those. Inspector Singer had dropped thinly veiled comments about safe words for weeks.

 

“Dean—” Sam’s hands reached for him before either of them realized Sam was moving, but they weren’t… Sam wasn’t holding on. Hovering less than a centimeter away from his skin, even with his clothes in between. Like Dean had some sort of force field, or Sam thought he did. And the bitch of it was, Sam didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it. “You—” His brows came together. “How did you kill it?”

 

“Kill it?” Dean repeated, incredulous. “Sam, it was a dirty cop killing people to cover up a shitload of cocaine he smuggled from lockup. He confessed to both murders and we nailed him on a third when we found the body of his fence stuffed in a wall. There was no ‘it’ to kill.”

 

“Dean,” Sam said again, fingers squeezing for the briefest moment around Dean’s wrists, “Did the third victim look anything like the woman you thought you saw?”

 

And that, right there, was that little niggling thought shoved right to the surface and painted in neon colors so bright it hurt to look at. Dean sagged a little, fingers tangling in the ragged edge of Sam’s sleeves. Because she had, once they’d gotten a dental match and pulled up her record. She had a slit throat and rope-burned wrists, Detective Sheridan’s M.O., and Dean put that on the report instead of thinking about how he was apparently getting sympathy bruises from people he hadn’t even known were dead.

 

“It sounds like a death omen,” Sam said after a long moment of nothing, and he might have sounded distracted if he weren’t still staring at Dean like he was about to disappear. “The spirit—that’s what you saw,” he stressed like Dean was in any shape to argue, “Some spirits don’t want vengeance for their deaths; sometimes they want justice. She must have been trying to warn you, help you catch her killer.”

 

“She could’ve sent me an email,” Dean pointed out, just a little too shaky to be a joke. “I almost got shot by the guy.”

 

Sam’s hands clamped down and stayed, and Dean let himself feel like he’d won something.

 

Then Dean’s watch started beeping, startling them both into taking a step back. Sam’s hands left him like he was afraid of getting burned.

 

It was written plain as day in Sam’s guarded expression that he didn’t expect Dean to stay, that he was braced and ready for Dean to whip out the cuffs or just turn on his heel and walk out that door. And Dean caught himself wondering—for all that Sam had apparently caused a riff by choosing college over his dad, how many times had his dad chosen Sam over the job?

 

“So a demon killed your dad,” Dean said, because somebody had to.

 

Sam looked spooked, like he wasn’t sure what Dean was playing at, but he answered. “Yes.”

 

“Meg? Or whatever one’s in Meg Masters?”

 

“No,” he said, and Dean’s stomach thumped as Sam shook his head. “But she summoned the one that did.

  
 

“Azazel,” Sam explained grudgingly, spreading the papers he’d gathered to reveal his father’s journal and the sigil scribbled there. His hands hurt from where they’d held onto Dean’s wrists, aching like they were used to clutching something that didn’t exist anymore. Possibly wouldn’t exist for much longer.

 

God, stop. He had to stop. He had to get Dean to leave, not show him further excuses to stay. What was he _doing_?

 

Except. Dean knew Chicago. If Sam could get him to divulge the information without letting on—

 

“That’s what was in the photographs,” Dean said instantly, leaning close enough that Sam could smell the leather where it heated against his skin. Sam held himself still and refused to reclaim his personal space; if Dean wanted out of it, he could damn well move.

 

“Yes. Yeah,” he corrected himself. He didn’t—he wasn’t wearing the damn serge, he was allowed. “She either left them to scare me off, or gave them to Gordon as a souvenir. He is also, most likely, possessed. Or dead.”

 

Dean hummed, palming the back of the journal to hold it closer to his face. “Can this thing only get around by summoning?”

 

“No. Summoning simply gets it to a place faster.” Sam’s hands were shaking. He shoved them into his jean pockets and forced his breathing to remain even, forcing his squirming nerves further back in his mind. It certainly wouldn’t kill Sam to have a fresh perspective.

 

 _That’s not where this is going_ , a harsh voice whispered in his chest, and for once it didn’t belong to Bela.

 

“Beam me up, Scottie,” Dean murmured, and flipped a page. “Does it have to be done in animal guts?”

 

“No,” Sam said, hesitation dragging at the sound, “Chalk would do, or paint. Why?”

 

Dean’s eyes flicked up to him and stayed. “You got a way to kill it?”

 

Electricity snapped through his blood, constricting his rib cage hard enough he had to take a step back. “Dean. No. I mean, yes, I have a way but—“

 

“So let’s graffiti this bad boy on the floor and pop the thing between the eyes.”

 

“It won’t come alone,” Sam said as levelly as he could, hands curling into fists so he’d have something to hold onto. “If it even chooses to come at all.”

 

“Huh.” Dean turned the journal upside down, which was in no way going to help him read Enochian.

 

“This isn’t your fight.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Dean said, lifting his eyes and nothing else, “Didn’t realize you had anyone else stepping up to the plate.”

 

“I have Bela,” Sam pointed out, forcing his rigid arms to fold, “Dean, you’re a cop.”

 

“Chyeah,” Dean said, or something like it, “So between the three of us, I am the one who can legally carry a gun.”

 

“Legal doesn’t enter into it!” Was Dean being purposefully _stupid_? “There are no rules with demons. If you pull out a badge and tell them to put their hands in the air, they will make you eat it. Literally, and in the most painful way possible.”

 

“And you want me to let you go in alone,” Dean drawled, a dry, impish quirk to his mouth that didn’t come anywhere near his eyes. “No dice, Sammy.”

 

The name grated in a way it never had before, making his jaw clench. “Don’t. Bela—“

 

“Apparently has the attention span of a very furry gnat, because she keeps _wandering_ off—”

 

 _Oh, I’m sorry,_ Bela’s sweet sarcasm slid across the marble tiles and apparently over both of their minds, as Dean jumped and turned to glare in her direction. _Did you want me to stay and watch?_

 

Sam caught a wet glisten in the darkness as she licked her chops before Dean leveled a look at him. “It creeps me out when your dog objectifies me.”

 

 _“Hellhound,”_ they corrected in rather eerie synchronization. Bela finally materialized from the shadows permeating the stacks, golden eyes glowing.

 

“Oh. Okay,” Dean said, pointedly slow, “so you’ve got one snarky half-demon Lassie and a can-do attitude. I can see where an extra gunman would just be superfluous, really.”

 

Now was _not_ the time to explore the little shiver that ran down Sam’s spine. He wasn’t honestly sure he’d be able to survive another round with Dean, not without a hope of ever being able to let him go. God, dangerous. Didn’t Dean have any idea how—

 

“Hey,” Dean snapped, misreading Sam’s brief silence, “I have at least seen _Pirates of the Caribbean_ , okay? I know the word ‘superfluous.’”

 

“I’m…glad for you.” Sam shook his head as far as the knotting muscles in his nape would allow him. “We have the Colt.”

 

“I heard about that,” Dean said, startling Sam’s eyes wide. Bela’s ears shot forward, tensing almost imperceptibly as she made a show of settling at Sam’s feet. “From the Inspector, when I swung by the Consulate looking for you. Been around in your family for a while, right? And no one remembers how…”

 

“Yes,” Sam started tentatively.

 

Bela jumped in, catching on immediately to Sam’s unease. _It just so happens, the Colt is one of those rare mythical weapons that kills whatever it hits._ Her tail brushed once across the marble as she glanced pointedly away. _Leave it to the Americans. But it’s worth a fortune if you know the right buyers._

 

Dean rolled his eyes, then rounded on Sam. “Why are you so hell-bent on ditching me? Look,” he added before Sam could open his mouth, “I mean, setting aside all of… _this_ , I realize—”

 

“Dean, don’t.” Sam took a not-entirely-steady breath, but his gaze locked on Dean’s as firm as he could make it. “You aren’t coming.”

 

“Coming _where?_ Do you even have a clue where we’ve got to go?”

 

Sam’s patience snapped. “Stop saying ‘ _we_.’”

 

Dean sucked in a breath, green eyes boring into Sam as deep and painful as if he were physically digging into him. “What’s got you so scared?”

 

He could feel the serge-red walls buckling over him like armor, and he didn’t feel strong enough to stop it. “The prospect of facing the monster who murdered my family might have something to do with it.”

 

Dean shifted his weight, but didn’t back down. “If that was it you’d jump at the chance of having backup.”

 

Sam’s voice lowered to a more than audible murmur. “Depends entirely on the merit of the backup.”

 

Dean’s eyebrows arched, but Sam caught a muscle twitch in his jaw, belying the casual answer. “Not raising to that, try again.”

 

 _Infuriating—!_ “You’ve never faced a supernatural being in your life—”

 

“Hello, death omen.”

 

“You didn’t kill it—”

 

“It wasn’t trying to kill me!”

 

“This thing _will_ ,” Sam snarled, feeling every inch he had on Dean turn brittle. “Azazel _will_.” His heart seized, and he turned his face away to hide the blood draining from it.

 

He’d made a mistake. First his accidental glance at the ceiling when he was lying in Dean’s arms, and after when Dean’s wrists were in his hands—and before, god, what had he been thinking? Need was dangerous. Everyone he’d ever loved _died_ and he needed. He _had to_ keep Dean alive.

 

“So that’s it, then?” Dean asked into the echoing silence, expression and tone completely unreadable before melting into tightly controlled anger. “I might not have been trained from birth to deal with these things, but that doesn’t mean I’m no good at holding my own and you _know_ that. So what you’re telling me is you know you’re heading into a suicide mission, and you expect me to be a-okay with that.”

 

Sam was thrown at how he’d leapt to that conclusion, too stunned to hide the fact that Dean was right. And maybe Dean had been guessing, or hoping he was wrong, because when he read the truth on Sam’s face his entire being twisted.

 

“God _damn_ it, Sam!” He tore a hand through his already sleep- and sex-disheveled hair. “God— If John Winchester was alive I’d punch him in the face!”

 

Sam hissed in a breath, shock ricocheting down his bones. “What does my father—”

 

“You were _alone,_ Sam,” Dean snapped, cutting him off. “You were alone and you learned how to live alone and make decisions alone and now you think you’ve got to _die_ alone when you don’t have to fucking die at _all._ Son of a bitch, maybe—maybe if you’d had a brother or something, maybe—just. God damn it!”

 

 _Look, I think it’s time the three of us had a heart to heart._ Bela’s low growl made them both twitch, Dean’s hand jerking towards the shoulder holster he wasn’t wearing as she prowled forward to place herself between them. _Azazel killed your father, fine._ She turned her muzzle from Sam to Dean. _And Azazel hurt your mate. But Azazel has something of mine and I want it_ back— _listening to the two of you whinge about it isn’t going to get us anywhere. I can continue hunting the demon on my own if you two don’t shape up, and I will._

 

“I know where he will be.” A spike of adrenaline made Sam speak without thinking, Dean’s previous words leaving his nerves raw and exposed. He froze the instant his own words left his mouth, tensing to a painful degree as Bela’s golden eyes and Dean’s burning green ones settled on him like molten lead.

 

 _Aren’t you a sharp tack,_ Bela said, and the intensity flattened with a flick of her ears as she realized just how Sam would know.

 

Dean, who didn’t—who _couldn’t_ — Dean took two steps towards him and stopped. “You prepared to fight me the whole way there?”

 

“I don’t— It’s not exact.” Sam felt cold settle in along his shoulders, and tried not to hunch them.

 

 _Oh, for goodness sake,_ Bela snapped before either of them could fumble another word, and loped forward to place herself in front of Sam, fixing Dean with her unearthly stare. _Samuel has a gift; understand, cupcake? He’s a regular Gordon Smith._

 

Dean stared at her. “Like anyone knows who that is.”

 

“I see things,” Sam said, as fast as he could. “Before they happen.”

 

And Dean’s stare turned to him, his voice coming out almost too quiet to hear the strain. “Like…what?”

 

“I—The nightmare.” Sam’s fingers brushed at the small cut at his hairline before he realized his hand was moving. “I dreamed—I _saw—_ ” _you die. I saw you die on the ceiling with your blood soaking through—_ “a building.” He swallowed, tasting bile, and forced each word to form. “Huge, abandoned… Carpet peeling off the floors and a good number of long, thin black tables. It looked like an office building, maybe, and I felt…It felt like there were cars…” His hands were moving again without permission, awkwardly twisting in the air in an attempt to show how it had seemed as if there had been traffic under his feet. He gave up and let them fall to his side, misery sinking to a pit in his stomach. “I do realize how unstable this all sounds—”

 

“Oh no,” Dean said, and Sam was too tired to work out the degree of seriousness in his tone, “of all the things I’ve heard tonight? This is actually making sense to me.”

 

It was Sam’s turn to stare. “I…Pardon?”

 

“Don’t say pardon, say what,” Dean said, correcting an entire world’s definition of correct grammar. “And I know where to find Anasazi.”

 

 _Azazel,_ Bela reproved, though her teeth glinted with the shape of her grin.

 

“Dude, _whatever_.” He turned his full attention back on Sam, and Sam liked to think he was ready for it when nothing could be further from the truth. “So,” Dean growled, likely aggravated by the hard set of Sam’s jaw, “you two are going to get in the car, and I will drive us to this place. And on the way, you’re going to teach me how to kill demons. Okeydokey? Awesome.”

 

He stormed off in the direction of the lobby with the journal still clutched in one hand, leaving Sam to gather up the rest of his things and follow after, abandoning a pile of printouts the janitorial staff would puzzle over soon enough. Bela remained absolutely no help, smirking up at Sam in a manner that would have been more suited to a feline.

 

 _Reverting back to your higher vocabulary?_ Bela stood and shook herself off, settling her fur and the nerves gathering in them both like static electricity. _I understand. It makes perfect sense to put some distance between you two before the inevitable._

 

“Bela,” Sam said. “Don’t.”

 

 _He's cannon fodder._ She reared up and planted her paws on his shoulders to give his jaw a cursory lick. _He can't be saved in time, and you know it._

 

He shoved her down and hurried after Dean, heart thumping painfully in his chest, well aware that Bela was trotting along behind him, languidly wagging her tail.

Sam was quiet in the car. Shocker. And he was grim about it. Like Dean was driving him to the execution block when he was just driving them to the damn post office.

 

It wasn’t even a long drive—right out of the parking lot and in two seconds they were on the highway, the only car except for one stray early bird guzzling coffee as he trundled along in his beamer. God, Dean would kill for coffee. He’d gone longer with less sleep before, but that was usually without a round of intense and emotionally draining…fighting. And sex, while fighting. And usually, he’d had coffee.

 

 _If there was a Starbucks within the next..._ Dean caught himself thinking, but then they were over the bridge, and the building Sam had dreamed up was looming in their headlights, along with the sign telling them “19 MINUTES TO MANNHIEM,” in chipped digital letters. Thirty more seconds, and they’d be underneath the abandoned building.

 

Dean wasn’t thinking about that—the dreaming. It didn’t matter. Sam could be as crazy as Tom Cruise and Dean would still bust in there with him, gun drawn, ready to go out like Cassidy and Sundance if it’d get it through that thick skull that Dean was _in_ this.

 

 _Too clingy. Only been one day_. But the truth was…he didn’t know how to be anything else.

 

Sam’s breath caught, a barely audible hitch from the passenger’s seat, and maybe he’d thought they’d have more time too.

 

“It’s the Old Chicago Main Post Office,” Dean said, gentle and quiet like they’d wake someone up talking too loud out here. They didn’t even need to be on the highway, but Dean had wanted to show him…it didn’t matter. “It’s been abandoned for…shit, over a decade? I don’t know. They filmed bits of _Dark Knight_ here—You ever see that movie?”  

 

Sam shook his head, staring up at the broken glass in the boarded up industrial windows just before the tunnel swallowed them up, yellow emergency lights turning his skin sickly. Dean put his eyes back on the road.

 

“Yeah, well, you and me. Pizza and beer, we’ll watch it. When this is over. Okay?”

 

“Dean…” Sam said, head rolling on the headrest towards him like he couldn’t help it. Then he shook himself, and turned back to scanning the shadows.

 

 _Cute,_ Bela said, dropping her muzzle over the front seat to give Dean a look, _but a bit of a drama queen, yeah?_

 

“I liked you better when you weren’t talking,” Dean told her.

 

 _Fair enough._ She shot a glance over at Sam, but either he was being excluded from her side of the conversation or he was just too caught up in ignoring them to notice. _Since Sam seems a bit preoccupied, allow me to fill you in. Your bullets won’t do much._

 

Dean twitched; he couldn’t help it. “Great.”

 

 _They will slow the demons down, however, so bring it along. Iron can hurt them, or at leas most lesser demons. How’s your Latin?_

 

Dean had gone undercover as a priest once or twice, so he shrugged. “I can fake it. Why?”

 

 _Good, we’ll give you a book. Holy water works as acid to them, so make sure Sam gives you a bottle. Or three._ She licked his ear, and it was a good thing there were no cars in the cracked and abandoned parking lot or Dean would’ve sideswiped them. _Try not to die too soon, for his sake._

 

“Oh, okay,” Dean rolled his eyes as he parked, and looked over to find Sam watching him. “She miss anything?” he grumbled, awkwardly wiping the dog slobber off with his shoulder, scanning the parking lot for any signs of trouble.

 

“Devils traps. But if the demons are already inside we won’t have the chance to set them.”

 

“Demon _s_ ,” Dean repeated, fighting back the chilled anger swelling up at Sam’s lifeless tone. “Armand Assante and who else?”

 

“ _Azazel_ and Meg,” Sam said, slight frown tugging at his distant gaze because he knew Dean was being wrong on purpose. Dean swallowed a not-entirely-happy smile. “But there will be more.”

 

“…I feel like there’s gotta be an appropriate movie quote to say right now.”

 

“Dean!”

 

“Yeah?” Dean was well in Sam’s precious space in an instant, screw Bela snickering her furry head off. He didn’t care. He’d never liked the look of someone in the passenger’s seat of the Impala more.

 

“Don’t joke about this,” Sam grit out, but his fist was curling the loose cotton of Dean’s t-shirt over his belly like he couldn’t help himself.

 

“Not about this.” Dean made damn sure each word was heard, and understood, eye-contact all the way. He bumped his forehead to Sam’s and squeezed the back of his neck, and then he got out of the car.

 

Sam followed only a few seconds behind, just long enough for Dean to let Bela out of the backseat and force his legs to stop shaking. Sam grabbed his duffle from the trunk and peeled it open, fishing out two scuffed water bottles, an even rattier bible with strange markings up the side, a bag of salt, and the Colt, of course.

 

“It’ll really kill this thing,” Dean said before he could stop himself, somehow less of a question out of his mouth than in it.

 

 “Yeah,” Sam said, only slightly unsteady on the exhale before his jaw hardened into that unforgivable line Dean hoped to see a lot less of in the future. “It really will.”

 

“How many bullets you got?” Oh man, as soon as Sam looked at him he knew he shouldn’t have asked. “Christ, just the one?”

 

 _All we need is one,_ Bela slipped in, twining between their legs. _Now. If there isn’t going to be sweaty life-affirming make-up sex in the next thirty seconds might I suggest we head inside?_

 

Sam only faltered once on the way inside, when they passed the dilapidated little toll booth and his eyes got stuck on the sign that read One Way Drive. Dean didn’t even have time to reach out for him before he snapped out of it, which was kind of a bummer.

 

The place was shit, really. The big shiny lock and chain the city paid to put on every door did squat when the hinges were so rusted Dean barely had to tap them with the butt of his gun before they fell off. The carpet really was peeling, cheap foam covered in mold and puffing up clouds of spores and dust with every step, every single light above their heads cracked and leaking whatever gunk filled neon bulbs. Good old Chicago, though, she pulled it off with an eerie kind of grace.

 

Big ass building, unfortunately. Meg could be anywhere, if she was in here at all. Dean wished he could dredge up a little more doubt about the whole thing.

 

They’d silently fought over who would go first, up until Sam looked like he was one threadbare maple leaf away from socking Dean in the jaw and leaving him crumpled in the mold spores. So they were side-by-side, weapons drawn and shoulders tense, when a shadowed figure crossed the hallway in front of them.

 

Dean sucked in a quiet, startled breath, and the man stepped back, peering down into the darkness surrounding them. If their belt buckles so much as glinted—

 

Bela materialized behind the figure, pinpoints of golden fire marking her eyes as she pounced, slamming him into the ground and pinning his neck between her jaws. The man convulsed, limbs thrashing as his neck snapped again and again and again and—black smoke spilled out of his mouth as thick as syrup, blacker than the gloom of the building, and sank into the floor.

 

“Demon,” Sam murmured, barely an inch from Dean’s ear, and Dean wasn’t quite fast enough to suppress a flinch. He nodded, made sure to meet Sam’s eyes when he did it.

 

So it looked like Bela was good for something.

 

He couldn’t stop himself from checking for a pulse as they passed the body, even on that mangled throat. The guy looked like a squatter, scruffy and unwashed, but that didn’t make it any easier to wipe the blood off on his jeans.

 

“Dean…” Sam started, but Dean shook his head and caught up until their shoulders brushed on every step, Bela in the lead.

 

Okay, so he wasn’t as prepared for this as he’d thought. Fuck, there were people in the monsters Sam wanted him to kill. Not that he’d given Dean anything to fight them with that would do more than sting, but shit. Sam shouldn’t have anyone’s death on his conscience.

 

He didn’t have time to think anymore, not with Bela shrinking back from an open door with her ears pressed flat to her skull and her hackles up. They crept forward, whispers of words trailing back through the damp, dark air.

 

 _“Tire quiero patem me a di…”_

 

Meg was standing in front of a makeshift altar, a mangle of bones and symbols and candles shoved onto one of the abandoned letter-sorting tables. Azazel’s sigil had been carved into the peeling paint on the wall, etched out in soot on the area of floor they’d cleared of carpet. And by ‘they’ Dean meant Meg and the man who was quite obviously Gordon Walker, even as he kneeled before Meg with a huge silver chalice in his hands.

 

 _“Omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…”_

 

The hairs on the back of Dean’s neck stood on end so fast it made his muscles scream with a near-primal need to run. _No._ Just because he was dealing with previously impossible shit did not mean he was out of his depths. It couldn’t, not if he wanted out of this alive.

 

Meg grabbed Gordon’s jaw and shoved it towards the ceiling, and in a flash of silver Gordon’s lifeblood was spilling out of the gash in his throat to fill the chalice to the brim.

 

Dean jerked forward without thinking, instantly caught by Sam’s arm as if he’d known he would move. His gaze said _Not yet,_ and Dean got that, really, but there was a man bleeding out in there—

 

“Good boy,” Meg sang, trailing a bloody fingertip in unholy patterns over his shaved skull. Gordon glared at her with eyes that were as black as pitch, but didn’t so much as sway let alone crumple to the ground. She laughed at his blunt hatred. “I’m Azazel’s child. Did you honestly think you wouldn’t be the one with their throat slit, here?”

 

Gordon made like he was going to speak; instead he coughed out a small puff of black smoke and had to suck it back out of the air as he stood. Meg jerked her head towards Sam and Dean’s location and ordered, “Go watch the door,” before she turned back to the altar, blood-smeared hands raising the cup high.

 

This was good, so good that Dean felt the smallest knot of tension loosen up as they moved silently into position, as quick and effortless as if they’d been doing this their whole lives. Dean spared a fraction of a second imagining spending the entirety of his life with Sam and thought that wouldn’t have been such a raw deal—and Gordon stepped into the hallway.

 

The room he’d left was bright with candlelight and something source-less that made Dean’s skin crawl, but Gordon’s eyes snapped to Dean in the darkness as sure as if they were all standing in broad daylight. And that look, Dean had seen that on psychos before, on sickos and pedos and perps just before they took a shot at him. Maybe they didn’t usually have smoke leaking out of a gash in their neck, but that didn’t mean shit to Dean’s cop brain. Not when could squeeze a water bottle and set the fucker writhing.

 

 _Serve and protect._

 

Gordon’s vocal chords were sliced, which meant he barely got out a hoarse rasp before Sam’s huge hand closed over his mouth and yanked back, skin tearing at the edges of Gordon’s wound as he thrashed under the hiss of Latin slipping from Sam’s mouth. Dean jumped forward to catch Gordon’s arms and— _jesus fuck!_

 

Something massive shoved him back, slammed Dean against the wall with the force of an invisible freight train. Sam’s voice faltered and Gordon’s hand, outstretched like some sort of sick faith healer, pressed against the air and made Dean’s ribs scream. Dean clawed against nothing, couldn’t even lift his wrists. Message clear: _Shut up or I crush him._

 

Gordon didn’t figure on Bela, or the fact that an arm between her jaws lasted about as long as a powered doughnut. His head snapped back, aiming for Sam’s and almost connecting before Bela jerked and Sam yanked, and there was nothing keeping the smoke from spilling out of the gaping hole his neck and up into the ceiling.

 

Dean stumbled as the pressure disappeared from his chest and dropped him the six solid inches he’d been off the ground. Shit and _ow_. Sam—who hadn’t mentioned anything about demons using the Force—looked white as a sheet as one shaking hand reached out and hauled him forward.  

 

“He’ll be coming back,” Sam whispered, his breathing harsh in Dean’s ear, “to sound the alarm.”

 

“We can’t make our move until she pages Azazel, remember?” Dean hissed, tightening his grip on Sam when he took a step for the door. Meg’s chanting all but drowned him out. “If we go in now she’ll spook.”

 

Sam didn’t look like he cared. Why the hell didn’t Sam _care?_ His eyes flared wide as he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter—Dean, our cover is blown.”

 

“Oh, boys.” Meg hip-checked the door with a sweet, evil smile. “You have no idea.”

 

She snapped her fingers, and what limited light there was faded to a painful black.

The ropes burned in tight circles around Sam’s wrists, blood thudding sluggishly in time with the pounding in his head. He felt hands on him and struggled, trying to wrench away from the searching touches that didn’t belong to Dean, and _screw it_ he did not care how he knew. Then a slow drag of body-warmed metal slid from the back of Sam’s jeans to push against the twisted knot of scar tissue above it, and Sam went still and cold.

 

“Boys shouldn't play with Daddy's guns,” a male voice smiled, breath hot on Sam’s face as he struggled to open his eyes. He caught the tail end of a flash of movement as the barrel disappeared from Sam’s skin, and then a hard brutal burst of pain snapped his head to the side.

 

“…you Winchesters, huh?” he heard when the dull roar faded from his ears, and Sam forced his eyelashes apart in time to see yellowing teeth close around their owner’s bottom lip. “Always…just itching to jump on the bandwagon of revenge. But you know what they say, Sammy,” he added, and the nickname jerked Sam’s eyes to the toxic yellow orbs of the demon who had murdered his family. “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world pink and skinless.”

 

He was smaller than Sam expected, human shaped like the nightmares of his childhood hadn’t been. Short cropped graying hair, lined expressive face. Azazel smirked, and Sam’s nerves screamed like he’d been dropped into a bed of red hot coals.

 

“Good boy, you just sit tight and take it,” the demon crooned, stepping away, and distantly Sam knew Meg was the one stroking Sam’s hair with blunt, cutting fingernails as he choked on agonized screams.

 

“Let it all out,” she soothed mockingly, “Don’t you feel better now?” The fire vanished and Sam didn’t have enough strength to do anything but collapse back against Meg’s legs as she stood, and slide sideways onto the unforgiving concrete when she moved. She caught him just before he hit the ground with a twist of her fingers in his hair, hauling him upright just long enough to make the drop harder when he fell.

 

It took everything he had to turn his head and try to bite her, but he did try. She kicked him in the mouth.

 

“The cycle ends with you, Sammy boy,” Azazel said, hands splayed, “Don’t it feel great?”

 

Sam choked on copper sliding thick over his tongue. He had to—He had to— Where was Dean?

 

Azazel latched onto his jaw and tilted his head up, forcing Sam to meet his searching gaze. “No one to bother avenging you, is there? Or you thinking about that cop?”

 

One bruising jerk and Sam was looking at Dean’s crumpled, bloody form, tied to a pillar not ten feet away. Bela was bound at his feet, whimpering low and pained as the holy water in the ropes burned her fur. She stared at him, not daring to move, not daring to slip into his mind. He couldn’t tell if Dean was breathing. _God,_ what if Dean wasn’t _breathing?_

 

Bela whined and slid her tongue out to lick Dean’s fingers, even though the movement made her skin sizzle.

 

“Kill me then,” Sam snarled, struggling into the demon’s space as fresh blood dribbled down his cheek. “End it. _Go on.”_

 

“And the actor for best melodrama goes to…” Meg’s black eyes rolled hard enough to make blood vessels burst. “Honestly, Sammy,” she sighed, lifting his chin up so high he felt his vertebra grind to sing, “my daddy shot your daddy in the head.”

 

Sam lunged the spare inch of give he had, bloody teeth bared. When she laughed, he spat. She laughed harder and licked the mess off her lips.

 

“Now, now, Sam,” Azazel growled, shooting his daughter a painful and silencing glance, “that’s not how this goes. You beg me for your boyfriend’s life, and I grant it. He walks outta here scot-free, not a scratch on him, with a pleasant hazy blur over the blip you caused in his hellishly normal life. And you, Sam… _You_ get to lead my army while I—” He wriggled his fingers. “—take over the world. You’re the Pinky to my Brain, bucko. This is the way it was always gonna be.”

 

Sam coughed. “Since when?”

 

“Since I bled into your mouth and burned your Mommy on the ceiling. Keep up, Sam, you’re embarrassing the rest of the class.”

 

“You’re really something, you know?” Meg murmured before Sam’s ringing ears could even process what was being said. “You really thought you could be born with the power to see the future and still be human? Cute.”

 

“Every time Daddy told you you weren’t normal, every time he looked at you and thought ‘freak’…He knew you were a monster, Sam. Just like you know it. Luckily for you I got one freak-sized opening I’m looking to fill. I was going to make a big mess of it holding a Miss America pageant, but…well. Miss Canada lost the crown after punching out another woman in a bar fight—and I can appreciate the irony of not jiving on world peace. Sam. Sammy. You're my favorite.”

 

“You _killed_ ,” Sam spat, “everyone I ever loved.”

 

Azazel made a little disagreeing noise and tilted his head toward Dean’s still form. “Not yet. We could make it a hat trick if you w—”

 

A sharp flash of movement and Meg’s heeled boot came down across Dean’s windpipe, snapping his head back against the pillar to reveal his pained, open eyes. “Sweetheart,” she sang, “You got a knife on you?” She kicked Bela hard, knocking her away from Dean’s tied hands and the blade he was fumbling to hide. She wasn’t the least bit careful snatching it from his grasp, throwing it against a far wall as she settled in Dean’s lap. Sam’s stomach clenched. “Trying to cut yourself free while Sam distracted my father?”

 

“No…” Dean choked, throat working hard, and Sam felt sick and dizzy with relief at the sound of his voice and his bloody, crooked smile. “That’d be kind of dumb.”

 

Bela reared up, every black hair rigid as she shook free of her severed ropes and attacked, lethal white teeth bared and then buried as deep as her hellish jaws could go. Dean barely got his legs out of the way of her claws, struggling against his hobbling ties to stand just in time for Azazel to slam him back without a touch. One twitch of his fingers and Dean’s neck would snap.

 

That _could not happen._ That _would not—_

 

Something black and ugly reared up in Sam, flooding through his spinal chord into every cell he had. And then more. He could feel every minute tear in his screaming muscles, every twist of the rope as it—

 

Snapped.

 

Sam grabbed at the Colt, jamming his finger behind the trigger just the yellow eyed demon pulled it. He heard the crack of his bone shattering more than felt it, bound feet lashing out to catch Azazel just under his knee, ripping the gun free of his grasp as the demon crashed to the ground. All Sam had to do was roll on his side, press the gun to Azazel’s temple, and fire.

 

And it was done.

 

The shot deafened him, turned everything murky slow as Azazel’s head rocked with the force of the bullet, and he turned pupil-less yellow eyes on Sam. Then a spark, an echo of electricity that lit up his bones and a sound like rolling thunder, and the toxic yellow faded to pale blue.

 

Dust spun in aimless clouds around their heads, settling in the bloody blistered gunshot wound.

 

Over. It was…

 

“Dean.” Sam dragged himself up on one unsteady arm and looked for him, vision starting to swim.

 

“Yeah, I’m here.” He was. Unsteady, bloody and bruised, but he was. Sam wasn’t sure which he found harder to believe. “Alive. Barely. You?”

 

“Yeah…” Sam’s voice was hardly audible. He honestly wasn’t sure.

 

“Bela?” Dean called, and she trotted away from the corner where she’d left Meg’s mangled body to join them, long tongue swiping over her bloody chops.

 

 _Excellent, well._ _Surprise, surprise, the gang’s all here._ She padded up to Sam, only refraining from licking him at the last moment when he flinched at the blood slicking her fur. Instead she sat on her haunches, and placed an almost regal paw on his knee. _It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Samuel Winchester._

 

“Likewise,” he rasped out, and she cocked her head at him in a smirk. “Go on and take what you came for.”

 

 _First._ She lifted her head. _Lend a girl your opposable thumbs?_

 

“Right, of course.” He fumbled with her thin silver collar, broken finger already purpling and held at an angle he couldn’t look at for long without feeling nauseous.

 

“Hey, hey, I’ve got it,” Dean said, crouching down and deftly flicking open the catch before Sam could protest. Not that he had much energy to, or the will once Dean was beside him, smelling of pain and sweat and leather—and girl?

 

No, the girl smells were definitely coming from Bela as she shed her shape and stood, naked skin glowing in the dim light. Dean fell over, landing hard on his ass.

 

“The—wh—shit.”

 

Bela’s lips curled in a smirk. “Articulate as ever, I see.” She held out her hand and Sam…Sam didn’t let himself feel like he was losing a piece of his Dad when he gave her the gun.

 

“Whoa, hold up,” Dean snapped as he stood, surprising them both with his vehemence. “That gun’s been in his family for generations.” He stared at Sam. “You’re just gonna let her have it?”

 

“It’s payment,” Bela assured him, only a little sharply. “Services rendered for helping Sam slay the dragon.”

 

“I don’t need it anymore, Dean,” he murmured, and only realized after he said it that it was true.

 

It was _over._

 

He stared at the body and knew Bela was saying her goodbyes and fleeing, changing back into her lupine shape to smuggle the gun back across the border disguised now as one of her collar charms, but he couldn’t think of a thing to stop her. He didn’t need to stop her. He didn’t even realize he was shaking until Dean’s hand slid against the back of his neck, fingers tangling lightly in the hair at his nape.

 

“Sam?”

 

He leaned back knowing Dean would catch him, air sliding out of his lungs, over his tongue, teeth, lips. And his eyes slid shut, so he could breathe Dean in again. Dean tucked his face against Sam’s shoulder and waited him out.

 

Almost. “We should really get your hand looked at.” His lips moved against Sam’s hoodie, sending a dim, sweet shiver down his spine. “Plus I don’t know about you, but I’m about to crash right here.”

 

That wouldn’t be so bad, the falling asleep here part, but Sam’s finger was setting into that bone-deep ache that preceded screaming pain so maybe Dean was right. Sam still couldn’t bring himself to move.

 

“I just…” he started, and trailed off with a noise he didn’t want to call a laugh as he took in the carnage of Meg Masters and a nameless, nightmare-riddled face. “I don’t know what to say.”

 

“How ‘bout, ‘That’s for my parents, you son of a bitch?’” Dean offered, hauling Sam upright with both arms looped around his ribs. “You good?” he asked, steadying them both when Sam tried to turn to him too soon.

 

Sam shrugged a little helplessly, feeling strangely bereft when Dean removed his hands. “Don’t know.”

 

“But you’re talking like a human being.” Dean smiled through the bruises, blood, and dirt on his face, and Sam actually felt like one, almost. “So that’s a good sign.”

 

Something changed on Dean’s face lightning fast, horror and shock, and his hands yanked at Sam before he could get in the breath to shout. Sam almost fell, and then realized falling would have saved him.

 

Pain flared from his side like an explosion underwater, like it was happening to someone else, and Sam’s ears were ringing with the sound of gunfire and shouted Latin as he stared down at the knife protruding from his ribs.

 

And then he really did fall.

  


Sam woke up slowly, and a bunch of times he just fell right back asleep. Dean told himself he was done getting excited every time Sam’s eyelids flickered open, but he’d always been good at lying to himself.

 

A skill he was going to put to good use the instant Sam woke up.

 

“Dean…?”

 

Which was apparently now. Dean cleared his throat and fumbled with the remote until he’d punched mute, because if he ran to the bed sighing ‘Sammy’ like a lovesick girl, he was going to have to shoot himself. “Hey, man. Seriously, is daytime TV any good in Canada? Because ours is shit. If I have to see that stupid fabric softener teddy bear one more time…” _Shut up._ Dean blushed and felt stupid.

 

Sam hummed instead of answering, frowning at their surroundings. “Where are we?”

 

“Northwest Memorial Hospital.” Okay, he could do this. Dean chucked the remote on the bed and stood, thumbs hooked in his pockets as he leaned against the wall closer to Sam and all those blippy beepy things that were still easier to look at than Sam’s face. Go figure. He hadn’t been able to stare at anything else when his eyes were closed. “Um,” he added quickly when Sam stayed silent, patient. “Best I can figure it, the one we chased out of Gordon came back with a new…” He waved a hand in a general people-shape. “And I didn’t get you out of the way in time.”

 

That hurt to say, even as many times as he’d practiced it in his head. As many times as it’d thudded through his brain while he pressed his shirt against Sam’s side to keep his blood where it belonged while he screamed at the 911 Operator and Dispatch and Sam in turn. In between counting every hoarse breath Sam took he figured out their story, and rattled it off now.

 

“Zeddmore called when your prints didn’t turn up in the system but as it turns out that was some sort of computer error, which Inspector Tiel down at the Consulate was willing to verify. Right about that time I got an anonymous call saying one of the suspects in the murder and missing persons investigation I was conducting on Meg Masters was sighted entering the Old Main Post Office, and you offered to come along as backup seeing as it was probably just a hoax. We busted in to find our suspect, Dr. Gordon Walker, dead on arrival, the victim of a brutal animal attack. Following the sounds of a fight deeper into the building, we came across an as yet unidentified squatter standing over the body of one Mr.—” He had to check his notes, and his tongue so he wouldn’t call the yellow-eyed bastard names. “Mr. Frederic Lehne, who had apparently antagonized the homeless man’s wolfhound into killing Meg Masters, held there for reasons unknown. The man claimed he’d had no choice but to shoot Mr. Lehn. When I identified myself as police he panicked and a fire-fight broke out. The man threw his gun through the window when he realized he was out of bullets—both the weapon and the wolfhound are still at large—and when he stabbed you, I had to use force to stop him.”

 

Yeah, force. Six bullets and the guy still hadn’t gone down until he’d gotten sick of Dean yelling the Lord’s Prayer in Latin on repeat—who knew, it paid to go undercover—and disappeared in a scream of black smoke. Near as Dean could figure it had seen the bullet hole in Azazel’s head and decided not to risk it.

 

Dean was so caught up in talking he forgot he wasn’t looking at Sam.

 

It was worse seeing Sam awake, with dark swollen bruises bone white on the cheekbone where he’d been pistol-whipped and his finger in a splint, IV pumping God knows what into his other arm while the blankets thankfully hid the bandaged stab wound in his side. Sam’s eyes watched him from underneath it all, calm and clear and almost sky blue in the weird neon lights. The blade had hit a rib instead of any vital organs, thank Christ, but still—it was too fucking close.

 

Dean was too fucking close.

 

“So, uh.” He cleared his throat and snapped his gaze back to his shitkickers. “Cas isn’t going to send up any red flags with the whole…Dudley Doright…thing, in return for me not rounding up his actual Mounties on drug charges—apparently not too many of you guys are willing to set up shop in Chicago, which is…” _Great_ , he meant to say. Only. Yeah.

 

Dean took a breath. “You came over with a legal passport, so that’s all good. As far as Canada knows, you haven’t done anything wrong. So you’ll be able to get your old life back no problemo.”

 

 _…Problemo?_ Jesus.

 

“Dean,” Sam started, and shit, Dean couldn’t stand how soft his voice was.

 

“Goddamn it, Sam, I’m not stupid,” he snapped, shoving off the wall so he could pace. “You’ve known me a grand total of two and a half days if you count the time you were unconscious, which I might have to just to make it sound less pathetic. You might not have family back in Canada but you sure as hell have friends, and college credits, and I know I’m not enough to make anyone stick around. But I’m gonna ask anyway, because if I don’t I’ll regret it and I’ve always been a glutton for punishment.”

 

He took a deep breath full of the sounds of heart monitors and stopped at the end of the bed, a beat-up, unrefined flatfoot with experimental hair.

 

“Samuel Winchester,” he said, meeting Sam’s wide eyes even though it was going to wind up killing him, “please stay for me.”

 

And there came the silence.

 

“ _Dean_ —” Sam gasped, breaking it, and actually started struggling to sit up _because he was a moron,_ “Dean—You—”

 

“Down!” Dean snapped, alarmed, at his side in an instant to grasp Sam’s broad shoulders and pin them to the bed. “You tear out your fucking stitches and so help me—”

 

But it turned out Sam didn’t want to sit up so much as get Dean closer, wrap his good hand around the back of Dean’s neck and haul him in for a kiss so scorching it about fused Dean’s spine. The angle was awkward, Sam’s mouth tasted like stale death, and there were about a million tubes and wires and, oh yeah, a knife wound Dean could fuck up by breathing wrong, and it still took everything he had not to climb on the bed and rock against Sam until everything was okay.

 

“I’m on a lot of painkillers right now,” Sam said when they pulled apart, and caught Dean’s heart with a squeeze and a blinding grin before it even got the chance to fall. “But even I know I can get a student visa and attend college in the states.”

 

“Oh.” Dean tried his best not to shiver when Sam’s hand followed the leather strip around his neck to the gold amulet, fingers closing tight around it to tug Dean down. “Got a particular state in mind?”

 

Sam’s dimples were fucking glorious. “Whichever one you’re in.”

 

“Yeah, that works for me,” Dean whispered, and pressed his smiling mouth to Sam’s.

 

  


Of course it wasn’t that easy—Sam really had been on hardcore painkillers at the time, so everything was a bit hazy except for the part where Dean asked him to stay. (“Begged,” Sam teased later, and was rewarded with a growling Dean pressing him into the couch muttering, “Show _you_ beg,” between kisses. Which was just one of the many hardships that came with living in the land of the symbolically free.) It took several months to get the paperwork in order, and one more for Sam’s scholarships to come through, and he had to wait most of it out in Canada while Dean threatened to sell his left kidney to get him on a plane.

 

“I just miss you,” he grumbled once, and Sam could see the embarrassed duck of Dean’s head as if he were right there in the cabin with him.

 

It hit him again like a punch to the chest just what he was doing, but a strange sort of hit that knocked out the tight knot of worry and panic that bubbled up in him sometimes when he thought of everything he was leaving behind.

 

“You know,” he said, crossing his arms so he could feel the pull of Dean’s bracelet against his wrist, “of all the organs you could be selling, I don’t have a particular _attachment_ to your left kidney. Your right one, on the other hand…”

 

 “Oh, ow, the burn.” He could hear Dean grin down the line, mirrored it without conscious thought.

 

“Don’t joke, Dean. Stanley and I have a special bond.”

 

“You’re naming my kidneys now?”

 

“Just the right one.”

 

“Yeah, well, Ben and I are feeling really unloved.” He heard the clink of Dean’s fridge as he reached for a beer and the soft gasp for air after Dean took a swig.

 

“Not fair.”

 

“Not a clue what you’re talking about,” Dean lied.

 

“I wouldn’t get too attached to Ben, there, if you’re planning on affording the cable packages I need to watch curling.”

 

“You don’t even like curling!”

 

“I’m Canadian. I’m not allowed to hate curling.”

 

Dean took another gulp like he needed it, sighing around his mouthful. “Did you miss the part where I admitted to missing your dumb Canuck face?”

 

It was Sam’s turn to duck his head. “I thought you had a strict No Chick Flicks policy on our telephone calls.”

 

“Dude, that was _so_ a precursor to phonesex. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

 

“I miss you too,” Sam said around a slow smile he felt down to his toes.

 

Dean was quiet just long enough to let Sam know he’d heard. Then, “Shut up and tell me what you’re wearing, bitch.”

 

“Jerk,” Sam responded instantly, and told him.

 

 **THE END  
** THE [ART](http://sagetan.livejournal.com/11091.html)  
THE [MASTERPOST](http://queenklu.livejournal.com/193027.html)  
THE [SOUNDTRACK](http://queenklu.livejournal.com/192988.html)<


End file.
